• HOWWEMASTER- OUR- FATE • 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf___„_„„_. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE 



BY 



URSULA N. GESTEFELD 



NEW YORK 
THE GESTEFELD PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1897 



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COPYRIGHTED, 1897, BY 

XJKSULA N. GESTEFELD. 



(All rights reserved.) 



PREFACE. 

Practically, if not theoretically, we admit the element of 
chance or luck in the government of our lives and conse- 
quently, believe in fate; believe that many of our conditions 
and experiences are beyond our power of control and must be 
endured with as much fortitude as we are able to command. 

We have become accustomed to look to the hereafter as 
the only possible state of freedom from the tyranny of cir- 
cumstance, and have given to present endurance an amount of 
energy better expended in gaining control. 

To see destiny instead of fate, law and order in place of 
luck or chance, is to see the possibility of control; it is to ex- 
pend our energy in co-operation with law and thus gain those 
results which are practical proofs that destiny is master of 
fate, and we rulers of circumstance instead of its blind slaves. 

These pages are given in the hope that by their means 
the road that leads from servitude to mastery may present it- 
self to some who are wandering in a wilderness, seeking a way 
and finding none. They direct attention to neither stars nor 
" spirits " but to the ever-present possibilities of the human 
soul and how they can be developed. They teach concentra- 
tion, and not needless diffusion, of energy; self-reliance in- 
stead of a misplaced dependence upon anything in the heaven 
above or the earth beneath. 

Published originally in The Exodus they are now pre- 
sented in a compact form which enables them to be kept 
readily at hand as an inspirer of better thoughts and efforts 
when the drudgery of daily life weighs heavily upon us. 

Ursula N". Gesteeeld. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Inventor and the Invention 7 

Law or Chance ?. 11 

Ascension of Ideas 15 

Relation of the Visible to the Invisible 19 

The Common Ground of Oriental and Occidental Philosophy. . 23 

Living by Insight or by Outsight 28 

Destiny and Fate 32 

Where the Senses Belong , 36 

Servant or Master? 41 

The Man and the Woman in our Dream-consciousness 46 

How to Care for the Body 50 

The Germs of Disease 54 

The Power and Powerlessness of Heredity 58 

Words as Storage Batteries 62 

The Origin of Evil 66 

Letting the Dead Bury its Dead 70 

What is Within the " Here"? 74 

The Hidden Body 78 

The Way to Happiness 82 

The Voice that is Heard in Loneliness 86 

The Language, of Suggestion 90 

The Ingrafted Word and what Comes of it 94 

The Law of Liberty 98 

Constructive Imagination 102 

Incarnation— the Purpose of Nature Fulfilled 106 



THE INVEOTOK AND THE INVENTION. 

It is self-evidently true that if one wishes to solve a prob- 
lem correctly he needs to be acquainted with the factors con- 
cerned in it. Attempts to reach a right conclusion without 
this acquaintance will prove abortive, and the worker, how- 
ever persistent for a time, will become discouraged. 

Like attempts to solve the problem of existence, individ- 
ual and universal, have resulted, for many, in a fatalism para- 
lyzing in its effects, a result mitigated in great or less degree by 
the moral or ethical sense as it assumes control. 

While it would seem a mistake, at first sight, to assume 
that the collective attitude of religious bodies is a species of 
fatalism, and because it is one of faith in an overruling power, 
critical examination will show this faith to be destitute of the 
element which would save it from that quality. 

There is a faith which results from knowledge and a faith 
which comes from lack of it. This kind of faith may be beau- 
tiful, but the other is more useful. One has a lasting founda- 
tion that strikes deeper and deeper with the assaults of experi- 
ence; the other, one that is liable to weaken. 

No teaching is ultimately helpful that declares the power- 
lessness of the individual in any direction, for its logical se- 
quence is submission to the inevitable. Whether this teaching 
be religious, philosophic, or scientific, its effect upon the in- 
dividual, and therefore upon the mass, is not the full develop- 
ment of his powers, but their partial stultification. Though 
this submission be disguised with the mask of obedience, it is 
not and cannot become that free and voluntary co-operation 
with unvarying law, through recognition of its nature, which 
constitutes obedience. Its "vestigial remains," carried over 
from generation to generation, prove it to be a species of fatal- 
ism dignified by the name of religion. 

Eeligious and intellectual fatalism are alike undesirable. 
One is an ignorant faith resulting from lack of knowledge, the 
other an ignorant knowledge resulting from lack of the per- 
ception that leads to true faith. One who recognizes the sim- 
ple, logical fact that man's destiny is involved in his origin 
echoes as his own desire Paul's utterance — " May the eyes of 
our understanding be enlightened . . . till we all come, in 
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man." 

If carrying to perfection the basic plan is the destiny in- 



8 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

volved in man's origin, to be either a religious or an intellect- 
ual fatalist is equally a mistake. Unity of faith and knowl- 
edge is the essential for fulfilment of this destiny, the essential 
for the mastery of fate. It is the only basis for obedience in 
place of submission. Obedience recognizes and honors individ- 
uality; submission crushes and extinguishes it. The nature, 
dignity, and power of individuality is the key-note to be 
sounded persistently, whose vibrations shall conquer fear and 
fate with knowledge and surety. 

In this series of articles it is to be thus sounded, and the 
attempt will be made to help to forward that unity of knowl- 
edge and faith which brings us finally unto " a perfect man " — ■ 
the fulfilling of our destiny; an attempt which is primarily the 
effort to enlighten " the eyes of our understanding " rather 
than to cultivate dependence upon a mysterious and unknown 
God, or reliance upon ocular demonstration as the only evi- 
dence of truth. 

As an illustration of the form of argument to be employed 
— not forgetting that illustration is always limited and not suf- 
ficient to cover the whole ground of perception — let us con- 
sider the relation of inventor and invention, and the conse- 
quence involved in them and in this relation. The inventor is 
the beginning or fixed point from which comes the invention. 
The inventor is the absolute, the invention is the relative. 
They stand to each other as cause and effect; the relation be- 
tween them is a logical necessity. Consequently, a third factor 
appears— the inventive power, the link between cause and 
effect. 

We have here a trinity in unity, a trinity which is a logical 
sequence, a unity which contains variety. Within this unity is 
involved a consequence which will evolve from it. If there be 
the inventor, there must be the inventive power and the inven- 
tion. If there be the invention or the inventive power, the 
other two are necessitated. They stand or fall together. 
Neither can survive, as the fittest, the destruction of the other 
two. 

We are not obliged to believe and accept this trinity. It is 
a self-evident truth, and the lasting foundation of all that 
develops from it. Looking upon this development, or evolving 
of inherent consequence, as a building, this building is founded 
upon a rock which no tempest can remove from its place; 
therefore, the building will stand. 

The invention must possess that nature which is derived 
from its cause. It is not its own cause; therefore, its nature is 
not self -bestowed. Being derived, its nature and all that enters 
into it as composite is compelled by the nature of the inventor. 
The one hinges upon the other. But the invention is not a 
visible thing, or an object in space seen with the sense of 



THE INVENTOK AND THE INVENTION. 9 

sight. It is idea, not an object in space seen by all who look 
in its direction. 

As the inventor's idea it is visible to him; it lives and 
moves and has its being in him. It is whole, complete, and 
perfect as his perfected idea. To him it is real as having 
place in his consciousness. To others it is unreal because it is 
his, ideal; because it has no place in their consciousness. 

Before it can become as real to them as it is to him, it 
must have place in their consciousness. The corresponding 
idea must be derived from their own natures; their idea must 
conform to this ideal. How may this be brought about? 

They are individual; they are themselves; they are not 
the inventor. How may the idea arise or form within them, 
which corresponds to his idea — the invention — and which en- 
ables them to see his idea because they see its likeness? In 
other words, how may the — for them — invisible become the 
visible, the ideal become the real? 

Here a mediator between the two is a help to that end — 
something that stands between the primal idea and its likeness 
in the individual consciousness; something which helps all to 
see and know what the inventor sees and knows. A model 
representing the inventor's idea, a working model, is a means 
to this end. The model is not the invention, but, because as a 
visible object it represents the invention, it suggests it and its 
nature to the observer. 

Visibility of the invention, which is the forming of a cor- 
rect idea of it in the observer, depends upon how he regards 
this mediator — this visible representative of the invisible. It 
may be a help or a hinderance to him, while in itself it is un- 
varying as a means to an end. 

Now let us apply our terms. The inventor is the cause or 
beginning from which the sequence proceeds, and by the opera- 
tion of his inventive power. The invention, his idea, is the 
effect and the expression of his nature. It lives and moves and 
has its being in him. It is visible to him, known by him, but 
invisible and unknown to others. How can it be made visible 
and known to them? How be made plain, obvious, free from 
obscurity or doubt? How be made manifest? 

Clearly, by the arising in them of the corresponding idea 
— the likeness of the invention. 

How may this be brought about? 

By a mediator — something which is visible and represents 
that invention, and which, in consequence, will suggest it to 
their consciousness. 

When, as a result, the observer's equally complete and 
perfect idea, which is the likeness of the original idea, is 
formed within him, the original invisible is manifest to him, 
becoming the plain, clear, obvious, or visible. 



10 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

The invention, as the expression, is that which may be un- 
derstood; it is " set forth " by its producing cause. 

The representation or model is that which is set forth a 
second time, or is presented anew. 

The manifestation is that which is clear and obvious to 
understanding. 

Between the beginning and the end of this sequence there 
is likeness. As a logical necessity the end must be like the be- 
ginning. 

The Science of Being is based upon and embodies the view 
thus illustrated. Before its principles can be applied to the 
mastery of fate, they must be discerned and approximately un- 
derstood. They are fundamental and capable of this practical 
application and demonstration. 

Hence the necessity of their consecutive presentation, and 
the student's persistent attention to them alone, refraining 
from carrying along with him a pattern which he continually 
applies to see if the teaching will conform to it. His motive in 
studying these principles should be, "Are they true 2" not 
" Do they agree with what I believe? " Belief is sometimes a 
good servant, but always a bad master. 

In the next and succeeding articles the illustration here 
used will be applied to the nature of man. 



LAW OE CHANCE. 

Every observing and reflective mind is sometimes obliged 
to choose one horn of the dilemma — either all is law and order 
or all is chance. If chance rules all, if things happen, we 
might as Well take life as easily as possible, for we are sure of 
nothing but the present moment, and even have our doubts 
about that. We must be submissive to fate, for it is supreme. 

But if all is governed by law, by that which changes not, 
there is no fate save that which we make for ourselves through 
our ignorance of law, and submission is unnecessary, obedience 
is the necessity. 

Let us apply to ourselves the illustration in the previous 
article, using it as a working hypothesis, and see if its appli- 
cation may not throw some light upon the problem of being — 
upon the factors of that problem. 

We find the inventor, the inventive power, and his idea 
which is the invention, to be a trinity in unity — an indivisible 
unity, for no one of the three can be separated from the other 
two. Yet they remain distinct from each other by virtue of 
the nature of each. Distinctness without separation is a point 
not to be lost sight of, for much depends upon it further on. 

Let us view God as the inventor, God's power as the in- 
ventive power, and man as the invention, and see what kind of 
a nature he would have in consequence. Clearly, his nature 
would depend upon the nature of God, as the invention, not 
only in fact, but in nature, depends upon the inventor. 

But man as the invention or idea of Mind would not have 
the nature the inventor might choose to bestow upon him, for 
Mind, expressing itself in idea, would have no power of choice, 
no power to bestow this or that by preference. A human in- 
ventor could half-frame an idea, drop it incomplete, take up 
and complete another. Here a human and materialistic illus- 
tration fails to reveal the complete meaning sought to be con- 
veyed. 

But if we view God as "the beginning " of man — and of 
all things — as the inventor is the beginning of the invention, 
we shall see the definite relation of man to his cause. If we 
then see that God, as impersonal Principle, as Mind, has no 
power of choice but must express itself, and that man, as the 
idea of Mind, is its expression, we shall see that the expression 
must have the nature necessitated by what God is, rather than 
by what a humanized God might choose to do. 



12 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

An uncertain nature and fate for man would result from 
this kind of a God; a positive, changeless nature and an as- 
sumed triumphant destiny results from undeviating principle. 

Cause and effect are in eternal unity because the one in- 
volves and evolves the other. God as Cause or Creator, the 
ceaseless action of God as Creative Power, and man, as the 
product or the Created, are, relatively, as the inventor, the 
inventive power, and the invention. Man lives, moves, and 
has his being in God. Effect is inherent in Cause. Man exists 
from God. Effect is projected by its cause. Cause is absolute 
toward effect; effect is relative to cause. ■ 

God is absolute to man; man is relative to God. The 
inventor is absolute to the invention; the invention is relative 
to the inventor. The connecting link between the absolute' 
and the relative is the power inherent in and working from the 
absolute which produces the relative. The inventive power of 
the inventor, the creative power of the Creator, the Force of 
Primal Substance, the Motion of Mind — they are the same; 
they are the moving " of the Spirit of God " which .brings 
something from no-thing. 

If man as the something is the expression of God, he is 
endowed, in consequence, with that nature which nothing can 
change or destroy. If his cause is eternal, he is eternal, and 
his destiny is fixed by the fiat of logical necessity. Conse- 
quently, there is nothing to fear; and to be convinced that we 
live and move and have our being in God, is to be free from 
fear in the proportion that we can feel our conviction. Intel- 
lectual freedom comes with conviction; but soul-freedom is 
ours only when conviction has become feeling. 

And here let us pause a moment to note the use of the 
personal pronoun, "he," in reference to man. Denoting 
ordinarily the masculine sex, here it refers to the sexless, or 
rather the sexfull, being which — rather than " who " — is the 
expression of God, is the invention of the inventor. We will 
not dwell upon this point till later. It is referred to here 
more as a matter of caution than of detailed explanation. 

But we found a certain sequence in the illustration of the 
inventor and invention, a sequence extending beyond the trin- 
ity in unity. This trinity gave us the solid foundation for all 
that rested upon it — for all that was involved in it. While 
the invention or idea was whole and complete as such, known 
to the inventor, clearly seen by him as his idea, in itself it was 
ideal, not practical. It was known to the inventor alone. It 
was not manifested; and before it could have a practical value, 
whatever might be its ideal value, it had to be manifested, or 
demonstrated, to be. 

Applying the illustration, we find that man as the idea of 
Mind may be ideal; but that he must have practical as well as 



LAW OE CHANCE. 13 

ideal value. He must be demonstrated to be. We may take 
comfort, however, in the fact — if to us it is a fact — that man 
is, as the expression of God, all he can possibly be; and we 
have to put forth no effort in his behalf. We cannot improve 
the divine idea, neither is it at the mercy of chance. In his 
relation to God as the effect of cause, he is fixed. We can all 
say " I am." We know that we are. Perhaps we are growing 
able to see, in a degree, why we are and what we are. 

If, before the invention has a practical as well as an ideal 
value, its nature must be demonstrated, the means by which 
this manifestation is afforded has next place in the sequence. 
For a corresponding idea must arise in the observer. He must 
be able to see the inventor's idea. His own idea must be the 
likeness of the first. How shall this come to pass? 

By the ascension of ideas till the likeness of the divine 
idea is reached. 

If there be ascension of ideas there is a beginning or start- 
ing point for them. What is it? 

The visible object, the model, the representative of the in- 
visible subject — the thing seen. The thing seen stands be- 
tween the invention and its demonstrated nature and value. 
It is a means to an end, but the end must be like the ideal, not 
like the means. 

Yet the means, the object seen, will suggest his first idea 
to the observer, from which ascent to the likeness of the true 
ideal must be made; and which will be made as the continued 
operation of the model and the continued study of the observer 
reveal more and more the nature of the invention. This nature 
will be caught and framed in idea little by little, part by part, 
till the whole is seen and framed — till the likeness appears in 
the observer. 

Man as the divine idea is to be manifested in like manner. 
The same sequence obtains with him. He is, but what is he? 
What is his nature, and what his powers as the idea of Mind, 
the expression of God? The means to this end must have 
place in the sequence from First Cause, an additional factor in 
the problem we are to work out. 

The representative of the idea, the model representing the 
invention, the Figure that stands for the Number, is next in 
order, and as the object seen, will suggest the first idea to the 
observer; but his ideas must ascend before the nature of man 
is revealed, before man's powers are fully manifested. The ob- 
server's idea must rise to the level of the primal idea, before 
the sequence is finished. It cannot be complete till the like- 
ness of the original ideal is found in the observer. 

We have in this sequence, therefore, expression, represen- 
tation, and manifestation; expression of " the beginning " of 
the whole, representation of that expression and manifestation 



14 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

of its nature by this means; a manifestation which is cumula- 
tive, rising higher and higher through the ascension of ideas 
till the original level is reached. 

Shall we not settle it with ourselves once for all by the 
help of this illustration and its application that so far from 
making our being greater, devoting our time and energy to 
that end, we had much better devote them to the gaining of a 
truer and higher idea of that being — of what we are? 

God's work is all right, we do not need to alter it; but we 
do need to gain the true idea and understanding of it; and to 
this end we must correct the idea which has been suggested to 
us by the object seen. The physical person is not the living 
being, man, but is only the representative of that being. 
Looking at it, we have said, " This is I." Not so. It is the ' 
"Not-I." 

But we have named it, called it man, and with this idea 
have failed to rise to the level of true being. With this idea we 
have believed in luck, chance, fate; have believed ourselves to 
be at the mercy of circumstances. " Thou hast said." and 
according to what we have said has our experience been. 

I am. What am I? I am not flesh, blood, bone, and 
muscle. I am the expression of Deity, possessed of an eternal 
and changeless nature which waits my recognition for develop- 
ment and manifestation. All things are ultimately possible 
unto me in consequence, and I am master of fate. Through 
experience and its revelation I gain, little by little, the true 
idea of what I am. Nothing appals me, nothing can daunt me, 
circumstances cannot control me. I am. " Thou hast said." 



ASCENSION OF IDEAS. 

Did you ever concentrate your attention for even a mo- 
ment upon the thought — " I, in my real being, am the expres- 
sion of God? " 

If you do this you may feel a force arise from some hidden 
centre within and move gently through you till it becomes a 
physical sensation — a glow which warms and lightens and 
strengthens you while the perplexing care, the disheartening 
sorrow, grow dimmer and dimmer, till, for the moment, they 
are almost lost to sight. 

If this moment could only last! you say. If one could ex- 
tend it till it became hours, the hours days, the days years, the 
years for ever! If this could be, one would be master of fate. 
r "No more corroding care, no more failures in life, no more 
1 heart-breaking grief and disappointment. How delightful! 
But we are not able, you have said. Circumstances are too 
much for us. 

It depends. They may be too much for our actual or de- 
veloped power of control, but never too much for our potential 
power. To express God is to have the omnipotent — the God- 
power — focussed in our own being, which is its eternal distrib- 
uting centre. Lying latent, or active only along certain lines 
to the exclusion of others, it is as if it were not, to us. It is not 
drawn upon, is not consciously put to use. We are swept along 
by it in the direction in which it is operative, passive, unresist- 
ing, believing that we have no responsibility for the conditions 
and circumstances in which we find ourselves involved. 

To awaken to our true being, to gain the true idea of our- 
selves, to concentrate our thought upon it, is to get out of this 
current which sweeps us along, and get back to the eternal 
fixed centre. Here is the throne of the kingdom within from 
which we must rule our experiences. Here is the still place 
far removed from the eddies and whirlpools of the current. 

Before we can see as we are seen, know as we are known; 
before what we are can be made plain, clear, obvious to us, the 
corresponding idea must arise in our consciousness. This is 
logically necessary to manifestation. Before the God-man can 
appear to us, our own idea of man must be his likeness. We 
always see our own idea. We never see another's except our 
own is the likeness of his. If we would master fate, here is 
one of the most vital truths to be remembered.* 

According to our idea of what we are is our mental action 



16 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

and our feeling. According to these is our life. According to 
our present life is our future life. The law of cause and effect 
obtains throughout. Change at any point comes from change 
in the primary idea. For that change which brings dominion 
in place of the old subjection, man's man must give way to 
God's man. 

Ascension for the human species depends absolutely upon 
ascension of ideas. Water rises no higher than its source. We 
are always within the limit of our ideals, never beyond it. Hu- 
manity is lifted up only as its idea of self is lifted up. The 
human race is the aggregate of units. If any one unit displaces 
for himself man's man with God's man — his natural and edu- 
cated idea with the true idea — that one is a benefactor of the 
whole race. 

In him the divine likeness begins to appear. The divine 
incarnation has taken place. The Son of God is conceived in 
man. It is as yet conception only. Its gestation and birth are 
to come. But the divine babe is within. Later, it will be 
manifested to the world. 

The one whose idea of man is like unto the idea of God — 
whose idea about himself is in accord with what he is, generi- 
cally, as the effect of Cause— is a Saviour, if he cherishes this 
ideal till " in the fulness of the time it cometh to pass," or till 
it is plain, clear, obvious to others through a life and works. 
The Christ-child is born within before it can appear in the 
without. 

Do we look for the God-like in mankind? How could we 
see it, were it there, except we first see it within? The one 
who is blind to his own potential divinity could not see the 
Christ were Jesus here to-day. In this blindness he would 
still cry " Crucify him! " did Jesus declare, " I know whence 
I come and whither I go." What we see without is colored and 
stamped by our own idea; and so the letter-Christian of our 
own day, the perpetuation of the blinded Jew of other days, 
declares of the one who holds as his own idea of man the like- 
ness which is true and divine, " He maketh himself equal with 
God! " Lacking the insight which reveals the truth, thus it 
appears to him. 

But, logically, cause and effect are at-one or in unity, and 
for ever. The true-in-itself is unaffected by time or circum- 
stance. It is, and it waits. We are blind to it through natural 
sense. We seek here, there, and everywhere, up and down in 
the world, for truth — seek with many a stumble by the way, 
many a pang, many a cry of suffering, and all the while it is 
right at our hand, waiting for our eyes to open. The new 
world was, before Columbus discovered it. He only found that 
which waited for recognition. 

The new world of being, higher and fairer than the world 



ASCENSION OF IDEAS. 17 

of sense, always has been, always will be. It waits for dis- 
covery. The way thither is in the within. The light which 
illumines it " lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
The key that unlocks the portal is God-likeness in idea. The 
power to step over the threshold is the feeling which accords 
with the idea. 

How shall this feeling be gained? It must be generated. 
It must be cultivated. How shall it be cultivated? First by 
consciously and intentionally conceiving the true idea, then 
by making it the standard by which all the things of sense — of 
the outer world — and the experiences connected with them, are 
judged. Eight judgment is the basis for right feeling. Mis- 
taken judgment is the basis for a false sentimentality. 

Holding ourselves unswervingly to that yea, yea; nay, nay, 
which is uncompromising, we weaken and loosen the hold upon 
us of purely sense-perception, and encourage and strengthen 
soul-perception instead. As soul-perception grows it becomes 
feeling. Through this kind of feeling we rule our existence. 
It is religion. We have to find our religion within. It is of 
the heart, not of the head. It is inward recognition and ap- 
preciation of our relation to God rather than a profession of 
faith in a human doctrine. It is the revelator that brings God 
home to us by bringing us to God. 

Is this religion practical? Is there any place in this busy, 
bustling world for a transcendental view of one's self? Does it 
have a really practical result upon our lives? Yes. None 
more so. There is no department in life, whether domestic, 
commercial, professional, or intellectual, where practical, and 
comparatively immediate, results are not obtained from the en- 
deavor to conceive the true idea of being and hold it as the in- 
dividual standard of judgment. " As a man thinketh, so is he." 

According to our ideas our lives must become; for the 
Force of forces, Primal Energy itself, works to bring them 
to actuality — works to bring this highest idea to embodiment 
as a God-man in the world; in it but not of it. For this is 
the divine incarnation, the God-likeness in the flesh. 

Say this,- then, to yourself: " In my real being I am the 
expression of God now. To me belongs dominion over self." 
Make your statement always in the present tense rather than 
in the past or future. " Now, is the accepted time." Study 
the record of Jesus' life as it is given in the Gospels and see how 
often he speaks of himself in the present tense. This is affir- 
mation of what is, as the basis for that which becomes. It is 
necessary to ourselves. 

Only that which is — abstract truth — has been and shall 
be. All else is change. What is a fact to us to-day may 
cease to be the fact to-morrow. We shall* never be able to 
withstand this ebb and flow except our feet are planted upon 



18 HOW WE MASTER OTJR FATE. 

that fundamental truth which changes not. The fact to us, is 
not, necessarily, the true-in-itself; and if it is not, some time 
it must give way, go from us to make room for another; and 
fact will follow fact, each having its day, till the fact of all 
facts, the central core of all, the true-in-itself, becomes true 
to us. 

Some day the divine and eternal fact will supersede all hu- 
man and temporal facts. We can hasten that day by thinking 
and speaking of our real being as the central governing fact of 
existence now. By forming this idea, holding it continually in 
mind, never letting it go or losing sight of it entirely, we 
grow more and more conscious of its truth and power. We 
grow more conscious of the invisible, which is felt rather than 
seen, as the real, and the objects around us, even the physi- 
cal body, as the more unreal of the two. 

We get nearer and nearer to the great throbbing heart of 
the world — of all worlds visible and invisible, and vibrate in 
unison with it, as mere shapes seem more and more remote. 
We touch and take up into our own the life of all things. Our 
daily occupations and duties appear in a new light. 'Every- 
thing is easier than it used to be. Fear begins to disappear. 
Of what should we be afraid? Dread of separation from our 
loved ones lessens. There is no separation. All is one grand 
unity. Wherever our thought can reach, there are we. 

We are climbing the ascent of life by climbing higher in 
thought. The divine idea, our new-born ideal, compels 
cleaner, stronger, loftier, more noble thinking. The sensuous 
and temporal has no longer the same attraction for us. " Wist 
ye not that I must be about my Father's business? " says the 
Christ-child within. 

Holding unswervingly that idea which is like unto the 
God-man, by our mental word we speak it into our conscious- 
ness and find it there a vital throbbing fact which rules our 
lives. 



RELATION OF THE VISIBLE TO THE INVISIBLE. 

One of the first essentials, if we would rule circumstances, 
instead of be ruled by them, is to see what we are, in our essen- 
tial being, or ego, in contradistinction to what we appear to be 
in our relation to the external world. We must look within as 
well as without. 

We have been living in the without to the exclusion of the 
within; ignorant of it, in fact. We have been looking at the 
working model which veils the divine idea without making any 
attempt to lift the veil, though we have flattered ourselves that 
we were rending it in twain with our researches in matter. 
We have dissected and analyzed this physical organism which 
merely represents the living being, only to find at the end what 
we found at the beginning — dust. And we have taken great 
credit to ourselves for our wonderful discoveries, for our ability 
to trace all organic bodies back to the primal cell, for the 
recognition that this cell has its centre of force. But when 
asked, " What and whence this force ? " we have answered, 
" I do not know," and the veil is still unlif ted. 

Says one of the greatest intellectualists of modern times: 
" Experimental research but brings us at last face to face with 
an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed 
and to which they are related." Here is one of the greatest 
discoveries of the day — one original — for it must be original or 
» uncreate, having no beginning in time if it is infinite and eter- 

nal — continually operative Energy or Force, the initial impulse 
for all " modes of motion " ; the " God said " from which 
comes all that we are and all that we can become. 

" Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In our real being 
we live or exist by every " God said " in this chapter of Gene- 
sis. Every expression of Deity is a part of our generic nature. 
The vitality, the great throbbing pulse of our being, is God. 
" In God we live and move and have our being." Note that it 
is our " being," not the visible material shape, that lives, that 
moves, or acts, by and through its relation to Mind. 

We need have no concern about our being. We have 
something to do for our soul, and we are coming to that in due 
order by and by; but our being is as good and complete and 
perfect as " the image of God " as it can possibly be; and it 
will continue to " live and move," continue to be and to act in 
spite of anything we can do to the contrary, 'however much we 
might wish, in the blindness of ignorance, to bring it to an end. 



20 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

Our being is as eternal, as ever-operative as is God, for 
cause and effect are indissolubly bound together. The nature 
of our being, the rights of being, the powers of our being, are 
what we need to recognize and apply if we would master fate. 
" Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." Cease 
to look upon this visible machine that walks around the house 
and through the streets, as the living being, man. It is only 
the thing used. That which uses it is the living, while it is 
only the dead. 

We must think of our being in the present, not in the 
future tense; of what it is, not what it becomes, for it does not 
become. It is fixed and changeless. " Brethren, now are we 
the sons of God; but it doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
In our being we are sons of God now. What we are as such 
does not yet appear, or is not yet manifested. 

Do not forget the definitions of our terms. " Expression " 
is that which is " set forth." Our being is what is set forth. 
It is the image or expression of God; the effect of that Cause. 
" Manifestation " is that which is visible, plain, clear, obvious 
to understanding. What our being is, is not yet wholly visible, 
plain, clear, obvious to understanding. It is not yet wholly 
manifested, but it is. 

Paul is an excellent teacher, but misunderstood by those 
who have formulated "the Pauline doctrine," which is not 
Paul's teaching, but their opinion about it. It is founded upon 
the letter of his statements, and "the letter killeth." Any 
one can read what Paul says, but what does he mean? That is 
the question their doctrine does not answer. 

If we shall help forward this manifestation, this " appear- 
ing " of what our being is, we must centre our thought upon it, 
instead of upon the visible body. We must try to see the divine 
idea as well as the working model which represents it. We 
must try to discern its nature and the relativity of the model to 
the real invention. 

When we see that the visible machine is only the means by 
Which the invisible invention is revealed in its nature and 
value, only the means by which the nature and powers of our 
being are made plain, clear, and visible, at once we withdraw 
the thought and effort we have been fixing upon the physical as 
the all, and centre them upon our being instead, that we may 
help forward this appearing. 

We recognize the importance of thinking in the present 
tense. " I am spiritual in my being, now. I am whole, com- 
plete, and perfect as the divine idea. I am eternal in my 
being, not subject to change or to death. I am fixed and sub- 
stantial, not evanescent and temporal; for the eternal God is 
my lasting substance. In my being I am eternally intelligent, 
for I express Mind. I can never lose one of the faculties or 



RELATION OF THE VISIBLE TO THE INVISIBLE. 21 

powers that belong to my being, and I have no cause for fear. 
All that I am in my being is eternal and ever-operative, and 
dominion over all things belongs to me in consequence. I 
claim my birthright as the child of God. All things are sub- 
ject unto me. I recognize that I must conquer a mistaken 
sense about these things, a mistaken sense about my own nat- 
ure and being; but because of what I am, the power to sub- 
due this sense and its errors is mine, now. Though I have ig- 
norantly sold my birthright for a mess of pottage, as the Son 
of that God which knows no variableness or shadow of turning 
I now reclaim and use it. I am that I am." 

If you are saying " I am a poor, miserable worm of the 
dust," stop, and speak these words to yourself instead. Your 
words are not true. A " worm of the dust " is not, never was, 
never can become, " the image of God." Every time you say 
them your self-consciousness is held to the dust level. There 
is nothing particularly elevating about it. You are down on 
all fours with the lesser creatures. Do you want to stay there? 
Of course you do not. You want to be " lifted up." Then 
by your thought, your mental word, claim your divine birth- 
right of God-like being. It will lift you up out of the dust. 
It will draw you to itself. " Then shalt thou have thy delight 
in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God." 

We should never fear God. There is no need to fear God. 
God is Love. Why should we be afraid of Love? A wrathful, 
vengeful God is a human invention. We are afraid of our own 
handiwork, not knowing that we have made this God for our- 
selves. We have ignorantly surrendered the rights of individu- 
ality, the right to lift up our faces fearlessly unto God, instead 
of bowing, trembling suppliants, before a mental idol. 

But once we gain the true idea of being, once our own 
idea becomes like God's idea, this divine incarnation makes all 
things new to us. A "Happy New Year" dawns upon us; 
the old year has found its end. " Behold, I make all things 
new." The tiny babe within — this new to us, but old in itself, 
conception of being, is to grow to full stature as the God-Like- 
ness in Man. 

Fed with the wisdom which it attracts unto itself, while it 
is still young, still far away from the full stature, it disputes 
with those who are learned according to a false conception of 
the nature of man. It asks them questions they can not 
answer and answers all the questions they can ask. For this 
new consciousness growing within, there is no unknowable. A 
vista stretches before it which the keeper of traditions can not 
see or know; an outlook which is limitless and ever ascending. 

The one who conceives truly, or immaculately, of his own 
being, becomes the spectator of his own ego and its possibilities. 
The world and "they that dwell therein" become but the 



22 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

figures on the blackboard, the temporal aids by which he works 
out the problems of individual existence. At once his relation 
to them, and to all the experiences in which they are involved, 
changes. He is no more subject unto them except through his 
own submission. Though he continues to meet them — will 
meet them till he has proved the higher as well as the lesser 
possibilities of individuality, it is as their master rather than 
as their slave. 

Looking each experience squarely in the face, because he 
has lifted up his face unto God and caught the " Light " that 
illumines all dark places, he says to it: "I know you for 
what you are, and you have no power to terrify me. All the 
evil in you is the product of my own former ignorance, begot- 
ten in and born of it. All the good in you is of the Al- 
mighty, and with the good I can rule the evil. You shall be 
my servant and bring to me more self-knowledge, more con- 
sciousness of my divine birthright and its power. Whatever 
you hold for me, I am. When you have lived your day and 
come to an end, I am." 






THE COMMON GKOUND OF ORIENTAL AND 
OCCIDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 

When we can look upon existence as only the gradual 
appearing of what we eternally are in our being, it ceases to be 
a puzzle and an unfathomable mystery. Chaos ceases and 
Cosmos begins. Order succeeds disorder; a constantly clear- 
ing vision, the perplexity and obscurity. 

As nothing can evolve that is not primarily involved, all 
that makes up our existence is involved in our being as a pos- 
sible consequence of its nature. As that nature is composite, 
there must be variety of consequence. If we are clear in our 
perception of the fixedness of our being, we can view all these 
possible consequences without dismay. "Whatever comes, 
whatever goes, I am." 

Our being is the Divine Ideal. Existence is the actualiz- 
ing of this Ideal. Our being is God's plan. Existence is the 
carrying out of this plan. Our being is the archetypal Man. 
Existence is the gradual embodiment of this archetype till the 
God-Man stands revealed as the Man-God. 

Existence is necessarily full of change. It is a constant 
putting off and putting on; for the being — " image of God " — 
is to be " fruitful." It is to " bring forth " till all that is 
possible to such a nature is brought forth. We need not be 
appalled at any one consequence, for any undesirable conse- 
quence is limited, and can be first modified and finally over- 
come by another less limited and more potent. Whatever 
result of the lesser possibilities of being we encounter in our 
existence, it can always be dominated by higher possibilities. 

To this end they must be brought together. We must 
bring the greater to bear upon the lesser. Certain tendencies 
we feel. Certain potencies we perceive. What we perceive 
must be brought to bear upon what we feel. The greater will 
rule the lesser if we do our part as mediator between the two. 

Eemember that in existence we play the part of spectator 
and observe the unfolding of our own primal being and the 
graded consequences of that unfolding. Abstractly, existence, 
from beginning to end, is good. But in existence there is 
comparison. This is good, that is better, and that is best. 
Our sense about existence, the view we hold of it, and the feel- 
ing we have about it, must be movable — must move along from 
that which is good at one time to that which is better, and 
finally to that which is best. 

The spectator who observes this unfolding is the soul or 



24 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

self. Here is our statement — " In being, which is fixed, I am 
the expression of God. In soul, I am the actualization of this 
Ideal. Therefore, while I am complete in being, I am not yet 
complete in soul. While I am conscious that I am, I am not 
yet fully conscious of what I am. In soul, I must grow or 
become; grow till what I am in being is fully revealed or 
manifested." 

When this sense of existence, and the feeling it engenders, 
supplant the old sense and feeling, we become masters of fate. 
The old is the natural — natural to our ignorance of our true 
being. The new is the spiritual which comes from perception 
of our true being. " First the natural, afterward the spiritual." 
At this point is found one of the greatest stumbling-blocks for 
the would-be student of the Science of Being. "If I am 
created originally perfect, why am I so different now? If 
what God created was perfect, how can I be imperfect now? " 

Here is a paradox, one of the " mysteries of the kingdom 
of heaven." You are, always were, and always will be, com- 
plete and perfect in being. You are not yet complete and per- 
fect in soul or self-consciousness, but you will be eventually. 
In being you subsist. In soul you exist, and existence is not 
yet rounded out, full and complete. To-day, you are con- 
scious of your being — of its nature and properties, only in a 
degree. As a soul, your present existence is limited. In being, 
your possibilities are infinite. 

More of the possibilities of your being must be brought 
into your existence as a soul. In being, no comparison is pos- 
sible, except with God. You are the " image of God." This 
is the only comparison to be made, there. In soul, you are 
qualified by the degree of development. In soul, you are good, 
may be better, will some time be best. Imperfection is incom- 
pleteness. In soul, you are yet incomplete. Soul must develop 
till it is all it can become. Throughout this development the 
being is fixed in its completeness. The being is good in that 
highest sense which admits of no comparison. It cannot be 
bettered. The soul is good in the sense which admits of com- 
parison. It is good as far as it goes; but it is to go farther, 
is to be better and better till it is the best. 

The paradox is no paradox when it is understood. With 
understanding all mystery is removed. We would do well to 
pray Solomon's prayer — to ask as the greatest boon possible 
to be bestowed upon us, " Give me, Lord, an understanding- 
heart!" We pray when we desire. When our desire is for 
understanding above all things, and because we see that under- 
standing is the basis for true feeling, that prayer will be 
answered for the seeking soul; for the desire develops that 
power which is in the fixed and eternal being. This develop- 
ment is the answer to prayer. 



OEIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 25 

Soul develops only through desire, and develops always 
according to desire. Hence a higher quality of soul — more 
consciousness of what we are in being — is gained only as it is 
desired. If we are content with things as they seem, we can- 
not know them as they are in themselves while this content- 
ment lasts. A " divine discontent " is imperative if we shall 
grow in soul — if we shall actualize the divine Ideal. 

Our being is to bring forth its soul or self. This is its 
fruitfulness. The soul, potential in the being, is to be put 
forth from it. The being involves the soul, which, conse- 
quently, is evolved from it. Soul is self-consciousness. Self- 
consciousness is to be multiplied. " Be fruitful and multiply." 
That which is put forth from the being is to increase and in- 
crease — or multiply — till it is all it can become, and it can be- 
come all that is possible to the being. 

Here we have the common ground of Oriental and Occi- 
dental philosophy, the fundamental principles which give to 
each — and its various ramifications — its vitality or " breath of 
life." Strip each system of its clothing, apply analysis to the 
body till analysis can go no farther, and you will find these 
principles as the lasting residuum. On these principles rests 
the Science of Being, which is applicable to the whole human 
race, to residents of this and all worlds, visible and invisible. 
And whether the soul follow the Oriental or the Occidental 
road as a seeker for and demonstrator of the Science of Being, 
it is making the same pilgrimage, seeking the same " Light." 

" Man, know thyself." As souls our destiny is fixed. We 
make our own fate. Our destiny is involved in our origin. 
Our fate is involved in our blindness to that origin. Our blind- 
ness is natural, our fate is its as natural consequence. While 
that blindness continues we are mastered by fate, but all the 
while, under the surface of existence, we are being ruled by our 
destiny. When the blindness is displaced by applied under- 
standing, we master our fate and rule with our destiny. Then 
we co-operate with that fixed destiny, with the Primal Energy 
that is bringing it to pass, working with it instead of against it. 

The soul begins to master fate when, seeing its destiny, it 
uses the law of cause and effect instead of being used, uncon- 
sciously, by it. This law acts ever according to its nature, and 
will not be turned aside or stayed for all our ignorant petition- 
ing. And because it is immutable, we — as souls — can make 
our fate what we will; make it accord with our destiny. 

" As a man " — a soul — " thinketh, so is he." As we think, 
we — as souls — are. Our being is above and beyond the possi- 
bility of change. Eemember, it never becomes. It is. But 
our consciousness of its nature and powers — soul — is deter- 
mined by what we think. What we think determines what we 
feel. What we are in self-consciousness is determined by what 



26 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

we think and feel. Soul can never rise higher than the level of 
the thought it embodies; hence, as we think, so are we in soul. 
When our self -idea is a low one, our self -consciousness is neces- 
sarily limited, too limited to admit of much power. As our 
self-idea rises our self-consciousness expands and includes 
more power. " Ye shall be as gods." 

How are you thinking to-day? How do you do? For our 
thinking is primal doing. The objective act follows after the 
preceding subjective thought. 

" Oh, I am wretchedly ill and altogether miserable." 

Well ! Who is to blame if you are ? It is good for you that 
you are miserable and ill, because your experience is your first 
teacher and it must show you what you have done. You have 
been— and still are — thinking that which is not true of your 
being. What you think is true to you as an ignorant soul — 
you feel that way, for you feel your thought, and you have not 
known better than to think that thought. 

You have unwittingly let yourself drift in the mental 
current of common belief, thinking as others think and because 
they tell you that their belief is truth. You are expiating the 
sins of the world because you are expiating your own sin, which 
is error in thought. Thought begets feeling. You — as a soul 
that is not yet awake to its destiny — ignorantly take upon you 
all the woes of undevelopment. 

You 'have to experience the consequences of ignorance, 
but you are just as sure to experience the consequences of 
higher knowledge when you get it and apply it to the woes. 
And your suffering is the beginning of the means — not the full 
means — by which you get it. In soul or self -consciousness you 
are full of suffering. In being you are full of power to domi- 
nate that suffering. Bring the two together. Bring the power 
of real being to bear upon the sense of suffering. 

You, as a soul, can turn from one to the other if you will. 
You, as a soul, can choose which you will serve, which way 
you will think; whether according to the sense which is tem- 
poral or the being which is eternal. You, as a soul, are con- 
tinually choosing one or the other. Your suffering continues, 
because you are continually and unwittingly choosing it, even 
while you are hunting all over the world for a remedy for it. 

Grow, you must. You must be born into a higher con- 
sciousness. Your sufferings are but the birth-pangs, and they 
will continue till the birth is accomplished. Your thought 
must be born again, for you, as a soul, to " enter into " the 
kingdom of mastery, which is the kingdom of God. Never till 
you think the masterful thought will you master suffering. 
Never will you be rid of suffering in some form till you do 
master it. Never will you find its remedy in any objective 
thing. 



ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 27 

" The kingdom of God is within you." The powers of 
your being are the remedy. They must be brought to bear 
upon the conditions of the soul, and then they will lift the 
soul — gradually^ not all at once-4-to its level. ■+ Watch your 
thinking. Think according to your being, the absolutely true A ■ t ^ ti< v* 
standard, and not according to a present sense which is only 
relatively true and is to be outgrown and known no more. 




LIVING BY INSIGHT OK BY OUTSIGHT. 

That thing you see when you look in the mirror is not you. 
It is yours. It is something you use, and as such it is good. 
By means of it you execute your thought on the plane to which 
the object belongs. It does not think or exercise volition.. 
You do. 

You desire a book which is up-stairs. Your desire forms 
the thought, " I will go and get it." The flesh and blood feet 
travel out of the room, up the stairs and enter the room contain- 
ing the book. The flesh and blood hand reaches out and grasps 
the book. What had flesh and blood to do with all this? It 
was simply the servant obedient to its master; the means by 
which the thought became execution on the plane of gross matter. 

Stand before the mirror and say to what you see there, " You 
are mine. You are not I. And I will use you to the highest 
not the lowest ends. You belong to the seventh day. I was be- 
fore you and I shall be after you. You are for Time, I am eternal. 
You are the servant, I am the master." 

Try to gain the help for daily living that comes from the 
perception of the right relation between subject and object. You 
can look upon the visible flesh and blood body, study it, weigh 
and measure it, analyze it, reduce it to its constituent elements. 
You can reach a conclusion about it, gain knowledge of what it 
is. Can it weigh, measure, and analyze you? Can it gain an 
understanding of what you are? No. Then which is the greater 
of the two ? Surely, the subject is more than the object. 

Do we live according to this truth, or as if the object was 
more than the subject? When we live by outsight, we live as 
if the object were the greater of the two. When we live by in- 
sight, we endeavor to adjust daily experience according to the 
right relation between the two. WTien we live by outsight, we be- 
come submissive to fate. When we live by insight, we see our 
glorious destiny and master our fate. 

Living by outsight gives us what is commonly called the 
life of the senses. We eat, drink and make merry, doubtful if 
there is anything beyond the present visible, at best hopeful that 
there is a future life. Living by insight we live the soul-life 
which can rise from hope to certainty. We can cultivate, not 
the belief, but the demonstrably true knowledge, that the object 
is only a machine temporarily used; that it is the means through 




LIVING BY INSIGHT OR BY OUTSIGHT. 29 

which something more is to be manifested; something which, 
because of what it is, must logically persist even when its means 
of manifestation ceases to be. 

It is the subject that thinks, desires, and exercises volition; 
and because these powers belong to the subject, instead of to 
the object, the disintegration of the object cannot change the 
subject, or rob it of its powers. It only removes the means by 
which they were visibly executed on the plane of gross matter. 
Disintegration of the flesh and blood body is only a falling from 
shape into shapelessness, from the individual into the general. 
Over and over again in what is commonly called Nature, its con- 
stituent elements appear, now in one shape, now in another. But 
back of all these shapes is that which is more than they, that 
which can recognize them, while they cannot recognize it. 

Eemember the illustration previously used — the inventor 
and the invention. By perception of the true relation between 
the machine and the invention — by insight — by understanding 
the limitations of the visible and the all-ness of the invisible — 
the nature of the hidden reality becomes " plain, visible, obvious 
to understanding." We penetrate to, lay hold upon, and make 
our own that which has its being with the inventor. As its 
nature is revealed to us, we incorporate that nature in our own 
idea, which will steadily rise till it has reached the level of the 
inventor's idea. 

Such is the destiny involved in our origin. Our self-idea, 
our thought and feeling, is to rise higher and higher till it has 
reached the level of the God-idea. The visible body, and equally 
the visible world, is but the means by which we first begin to 
realize self-consciousness; a means which, understood and rightly 
used, may help to increase our self-consciousness till it is like 
unto, or the likeness of what we are in, being. The relativity 
of macrocosm and microcosm to that which they veil, instead 
of absoluteness in themselves, is what insight shows us. Putting 
this knowledge to use, applying it practically, we drop the old 
self -idea, and hold the other as the standard for thought till we 
have incorporated it. 

We believe and think no longer, "I am a material being 
made of the dust of the ground, subject to the laws of matter, to 
change, decay and death." We think instead " I am spiritual in 
being now, as I always have been and always shall be. I am 
changeless and eternal, perfect as the God-idea." This last 
thought expresses our perception of the truth of being, our dis- 
cernment of the reality back of and beyond the visible shape. 

Keeping this new and true self -idea continually before our 
mental vision, it grows from feeble beginnings to matured 
strength and fulness. It increases in stature and " in favor with 
God and man," because it rises steadily until- it is the incorpora- 
tion or actualization of the God-idea. The end is the perfect 









30 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

likeness of the beginning. Between the two are Time and Space. 
They are limitations of unlikeness between the end and the be* 
ginning. 

They are within the seventh day. Its beginning is the 
eternal being, its end is that perfected self-idea which is the 
Likeness of the God-idea, incarnated, or incorporated in 
personality. 

When, seeing the right relation between subject and ob- 
ject, we hold this true standard for thought, we find our true 
centre— the centre of being. We cease to roam around the cir- 
cumference of existence, we live in and from the fixed centre, the 
still place. On that circumference there is constant change. Ex- 
istence there is full of ups and downs, pleasures and pains, joys 
and sorrows. We are tossed from one to the other like the 
shuttle-cock between battle-dores. Between them the only rest 
is found in helpless submission. 

But when we find and live from the true centre we become 
the spectator of that existence and nothing its circumference in- 
cludes has any terrors for us. We are safe in the still place. We 
are no longer tossed back and forth. From this fixed centre we 
speak with authority the word of power. " Peace, be still," for 
we find there the power of mastery. It is never found on the 
circumference. It belongs to being. 

It is found in the seventh day, but it was, before it was 
found. It is only coming to our own, finding that which is in- 
herent in our being. We find it in time and space, but time and 
space do not create it. The seventh day is that part of Creation 
in which it is found. That which eternally is, appears in the 
seventh day. 

We have " wasted our substance " — the faculties and powers 
which belong to our being — "in riotous living" — living by 
outsight only, blind to the within. And we have "begun to 
be in want." This fails us, that disappoints us, the other has 
no longer any charm for us. We are sick in soul, mind, and 
body. What shall we do to be saved from this suffering ex- 
perience? 

Go back to " the Father's house where there is enough and 

to spare." Find our true centre, our fixed being. Cease living 

' on the circumference only, and live in and from this centre. 

Govern the thinking. 



•V- l^-i. 



Self-mastery is inherent in being. It is attained, or found 



frfc^j 






and demonstrated, in the seventh day. Its demonstrations, 
miracles to the sense that cognizes only the visible machine, are 
the natural results which follow its perception and putting to use 
— its persistent cultivation or development. We create nothing. 
We develop everything. We cannot impart life, cannot create 
a living thing. There is but one Life. All living things are from 
it and are in our being now. We develop all the possibilities of 



LIVING BY INSIGHT OR BY OUTSIGHT. 31 

our being — of the natures and powers which make it composite. 
We find, develop, and manifest them in the seventh day. We 
cause them to appear. We co-operate with Primal Energy, with 
the divine plan, and help to carry it to fruition — help to make 
it fruitful — full of fruit or result. We work in Creation to its 
finishing, doing the Will of God that the end may be like the 
beginning. 

The creating is all done. The appearing is what we help 
forward. Nature, abstractly, is that which eternally is. Ob- 
jectively, it is the representation or figuration of that which eter- 
nally is. Practically, it is the gradual and orderly appearing of 
that which eternally is. But this appearing is only for those who 
have eyes which can see it. The vision limited to the objective 
sees " freaks of nature/' is startled by miracles. The vision which 
is expanded because it is seeing from the true centre, recognizes 
the appearing and sees neither freaks nor miracles, finds no un- 
knowable but only a present known related to a future to-be- 
known. 

This vision can find and follow the principle of continuity 
which is always bringing forth that which was hidden. It be- 
longs to the seventh day as well as to the eternal six. We need 
but to co-operate with it through understanding, instead of op- 
posing it through ignorance, to have our real and eternal being 
appear in all its majesty and power — appear to the finishing of 
Creation. 

Every trial, suffering, weakness, limitation, discord, is to be r 
mastered through consciousness of being. Each will persist until /3*c*^ * 
it is mastered. The more our thoughts dwell upon them, the 
longer will they persist. The more our thought rests at the true 
centre, the more will our being and its power appear, displacing 
the other. 

These conditions must go down and. out. Their end is death 
or nothingness. They belong to time and space. They manifest 
the possible consequences of ignorance of being. They are not 
the appearing of the God-Man. They belong in the seventh day. 
They were not before it; they will not be after it. They are 
the unlikeness which is between the beginning and the end. They 
are adversaries to be agreed with quickly, while we are in the 
way with them, and through recognition of their true nature and 
limitation. 

In the seventh day they are met, mastered, passed beyond. 
They die their own death. " The Sabbath was made for man, 
not man for the Sabbath/' because it is that part of Creation in 
which Man appears, through mastery of all unlikeness to God. 
Hence, the miracles of the Sabbath day are but the demonstra- 
tion of Man's likeness to God. Are we helping the likeness to 
appear, or are we increasing and intensifying the unlikeness? 



DESTINY AND FATE. 

Are you passively and contentedly living according to the 
personality which is less than it sometime must be? Or are 
you earnestly and actively endeavoring to live according to the 
individuality which is the changeless Lord? How are you think- 
ing? Up or down? As a personality you are soul and Person; 
soul subjectively, person objectively. 

We will say for the present that you are Soul and body. 
Therefore, as a personality you must grow. But in being or in 
your individuality you are fixed and changeless. Your only 
growth, or becoming, is in soul and body, and " Soul doth the 
body make." You are to gain in self-consciousness through 
recognition and use of the powers of your being. Every sense 
and faculty develops or brings forth its fruit through exercise. 
Every sense and faculty in your being is active. Its activity 
is compelled by Primal Energy which is ceaselessly at work. 

But are you exercising your faculties? Do you not see a 
difference between spontaneous action and your own conscious 
use of that which is active or alive in you? Every part of 
your being is alive — eternally alive, truly. But is that all? 
Is it enough to say " Because God is, I am " ? It is not enough. 
Primal Energy — the Word — has produced you, the ego. But 
the Word is to be made flesh. Through you — the ego — 
the highest quality of personality is to be made. The " made " 
must follow the " created." 

Here you have something to do. This is your destiny — 
that destiny that is involved in your origin. But between that 
beginning and that end lies your fate, which you make for 
yourself. You are to conquer your fate with your destiny. 
How are you thinking? Through your thinking the Creative 
Power is ceaselessly building your soul; and your self-con- 
sciousness always has that quality imparted to it by your 
thoughts. 

Do you think that the visible shape is yourself — the living 
being? This is not true; but if it is your thought, your soul 
has builded into it continually the untrue, the mortal quality, 
and "the end thereof is death." The visible body is but the 
outermost crust of soul-stuff — the point in the outgoing of 
Primal Energy where it bends toward its source. This bend or 
crust is what we commonly call matter. It is motion visible. 
Around the bend it will gradually lose that " mode " which is 
its present visibility. 



DESTINY AND FATE. 33 

If we think, or vibrate, with the God-power, we — as souls 
— are builded higher and higher. We become of finer and 
finer, or more lasting, quality, as we incorporate the Divine 
Essence. When we think that which is not fundamentally, 
and therefore not eternally, true, we do not vibrate with this 
great pulse of the universe. We set up a counter-vibration, 
and the result is discord and confusion. How can it be other- 
wise? We create an action which opposes the universal truth 
and harmony. 

Then we — as souls — suffer, and ignorant of what we have 
done, we say God sends our suffering upon us. This is true in 
one sense, but not in the one in which the words are generally 
used. God does not send suffering, because He sees our wrong- 
doing and makes up His mind to punish us for it. " God is too 
pure to behold iniquity." But because God's Law is the se- 
quence of cause and effect, the only over-ruling Law, we do 
experience the effect of the cause we have ignorantly instituted 
and permitted. Our sufferings are self-created, and they scourge 
us till we see their nature and put them to death by withdraw- 
ing their sustenance. We are punished by our sins, instead of 
for them. 

What we think we sometimes experience, and according to 
the quality of our thought will be our kind of experience. 
Action is from the within to the without; from the subjective 
to the objective. Ask yourself this question: Am I using the 
faculties, senses, and powers of my being, or are they using 
me? Because they are living, every one of them, they will use 
me — the soul — if I do not use them. I must be, inevitably, 
either the subject or their master. It is my birthright to be 
master. Have I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage? Am 
I ignorantly experiencing the unrealities of being, which to me 
are the realities of existence, because my senses, faculties, and 
powers are using me according to their own nature; because 
they are actualizing for me the false ideal of myself I ignorantly 
hold? 

If I am suffering, I have positive proof that I am being thus 
used, and am not using instead; am not doing what I must do 
before the liability to suffering can cease. There is being made 
manifest in the flesh the discord, rather than the unity of vibra- 
tion with the great pulse. There will always be manifestation 
in and through the visible body of the quality of the soul — of 
what the soul includes. Consequently, what is contrary to har- 
monious being must appear, as well as what is in harmony with 
it, if the contrary is self-created. 

So all healing belongs to the seventh day of Creation; that 
portion in which Man is finished; for healing is the removal of 
the causes of disease and suffering from the soul — a removal 
that makes them disappear from the body. Ehysicians judge 



34 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

of the health by feeling the physical pulse. Health is always 
proved by the soul-pulse. Is it beating in time with the God- 
Pulse? Are we working with God, moving with Primal 
Energy, vibrating with it to the end ordained from the 
beginning? 

If its beat is true and steady, the Word is being made flesh, 
and we shall behold " his glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth " in the seventh day. But when 
its beat is not in accord with the infinite pulse, when it is flutter- 
ing, fitful, and unsteady, our ignorant word or thought is being 
made flesh, and we shall behold it full of all manner of unlike- 
ness to the eternal God; for it is begotten of the ignorant soul, 
not of the Father. This manifestation, equally in the seventh 
day, includes all forms of suffering — all that we call evil. And 
the evil is to be overcome with the good, for the evil is tem- 
poral and the good is eternal. 

Do you see now why Jesus healed on the Sabbath day? It 
is because this work belongs in the seventh day. There is no 
occasion for it in any other portion of Creation. You are living 
in the seventh day. What are you doing with it? Are you mak- 
ing God manifest? Or are you only manifesting your own ig- 
norance of true being and its consequences? Are you glorifying 
God or your own blindness? Are you making the commandment 
of God of non-effect through your traditions ? 

0! as you begin dimly to see your own possibilities, does 
not your soul send forth the exultant shout, " Yet in my flesh 
shall I see God! " Do you not see your own divinity as a far- 
off star shining with a celestial radiance as it comes nearer and 
nearer till it stands over the house of human nature where the 
new-born babe of recognition lies? Do you not see that "he 
is our peace who hath made both, one, and hath broken down 
the middle wall of partition; having abolished in his flesh the 
enmity * * * for to make in himself of twain, one new man? " 

Do you not see that if Jesus of Nazareth reconciled to 
each other his divinity and his humanity, breaking down the 
middle wall of partition (mortal self-consciousness, consequent 
upon wrong thinking), abolishing in his flesh the enmity 
between sin, sickness, and death, and true eternal being, mak- 
ing in himself of twain, one new man, you can accomplish this 
also? 

For He is the elder brother of our family; the common 
family of God's children of which we are all members. And He 
is " gone before " or has fulfilled his destiny, while we are still 
at work with our own. As members of this one family we 
possess the same powers and possibilities that he manifested. 
God is no respecter of persons. His " substance " is divided 
unto us equally. But we have wasted ours in the far country 
of wrong thinking and feeling, consequent upon non-recog- 



DESTINY AND FATE. 35 

nition of its nature. Jesus had perfect recognition and realiza- 
tion of his. As we gain these we, too, shall work the works 
which prove our divinity to be master of our humanity. 

Put this recognition, the right thought, into everything 
you do. Do not wait for it to come to you. Lay hold upon 
it. Lay hold upon everlasting life if you would possess it. 
Breathe in the breath of life for yourself. Use your thinking 
power, knowing what you do, forming and holding to you such 
thoughts as are like unto your God-derived being. Form your 
self-idea in accordance with the Divine Idea. Make thus your 
own mental pattern as it is shown you in the mount of spiritual 
perception, and the Creative Power will bring the living Soul 
that wears that pattern. 

No human being should be permitted to do your thinking 
for you. When you accept the " traditions of the elders " as 
truth, without that investigation on your own part which makes 
them true to you, you yield yourself to an influence that is not 
the Most High. When you accept a self-idea at second hand 
without forming and holding it yourself, you abrogate the rights 
of individuality; and so long as you do this you can not bring 
forth. You are used; you are not using. You are in subjec- 
tion instead of exercising mastery. 

Do your own thinking, and according to the highest self- 
idea you are able to conceive. Look within you, not without 
you. "If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of 
light." Keep the inner eye fixed on the eternal, not on the 
dust pattern. Slowly, little by little as you behold it, the 
within will become the without. The subjective idea will 
become the objective reality. The first will become the last, 
and that last will be the eternal first — the God-Idea, brought 
to embodiment. Never forget that every faculty, sense and 
power in you is alive and cannot die. Ask yourself " what am I 
doing with them? " You can make them serve you royally, not 
as the magician of Egypt, but as the man of the Lord. Bring 
forth, you must. You cannot help it. But you can choose 
what you will bring forth. You have it in your power to bring 
forth the Son of God. Will you set about it? If you make 
this choice he will rule your daily life, for he is within. He 
will bear your burdens, heal your diseases, dispel your sorrows. 
He is at hand. 



WHEKE THE SENSES BELONG. 

"Well ! as long as I have my senses, I shall never believe 
that ! " is the ejaculation when we hear something said which 
is not true to us. It is a natural ejaculation, according to the 
common view of the nature of the senses ; a view likely to con- 
tinue till understanding of the Science of Being reveals their 
true nature. And what we believe is so often mistaken for 
what we know. 

The evidence of the senses in the present general stage of 
their development is most unreliable, as any thinking person 
must admit. And the beliefs consequent upon that evidence 
constitute a mental ball and chain that clogs and retards the 
mental activity which leads to a new understanding of it. 

Are you ready to do your own thinking, putting one side 
for the moment those views which have been law and gospel for 
you, because they are universal ; because the evidence of your 
senses compels them ? Are you ready to use logic as well as 
your senses and gain the evidence it furnishes ? Will you seek 
for that which is true in itself whether, as a present fact to the 
senses, it is true to you or not ? 

What is at this moment true to us may become untrue. 
What is true in itself is the eternally true that waits for recog- 
nition. To cling to what is true to us with no willingness to 
seek for the true in itself is to become a bigot and fanatic. To 
be a teacher and helper of men, a mediator between them and 
the changeless truth, this seeking and finding is necessary. 
Are you ready to individualize your soul ? 

Then take this first step. To what do your senses belong ? 
To the fleshly body, the soul, or the individuality ? If they 
belong to the material body, they are of the dust, they will 
return to the dust, and that is the end of them. They are 
mortal in this case, and can give no conclusive evidence of any- 
thing above or beyond their own level. They are destructible ; 
an accident can destroy any one or all of them at any time. 

Here are three ifs to be considered — if the senses are the 
means by which evidence of truth is gained ; if they belong to 
the material body ; if we have a soul that survives the dissipa- 
tion of that body, the soul is left without any senses and, con- 
sequently, without any means of gaining evidence of truth. 
What kind of a thing is such a soul ? Is it fit to survive ? Has 
it anything to gain by surviving ? If it has a destiny to fulfil, 
how is it going to fulfil it ? 

We say, "I see." This indicates that the power to see, or 
the sense of sight, belongs to the individuality. If it belongs 



WHERE THE SENSES BELONG. 37 

there, it is eternal, for the individuality as the image of God — 
the effect of Cause — must be eternal. But after saying, " I see/' 
we ask : " What do I see ?" Soul answers this question, and 
according to its development, which depends upon the water- 
ing by the four heads of the river. (See " Still Higher 
Criticism.") 

Soul is sure to pronounce according to what is true to it ; 
and what is true to it in its early stages of growth is equally 
sure to fall short of the complete truth. While the sense of 
sight — and equally the other senses — belongs to the individual- 
ity; while they are* indestructible and limitless, they operate in 
the soul. Consequently, their range of operation is limited by 
soul- capacity. The power to see is unlimited. What is seen 
is limited. 

Though the senses operate in the soul, they function on 
the plane of shapes by means of the physical body. The power 
to see does not belong to the physical eye, but it is expressed 
through the physical eye. Consequently, destruction of the 
physical organ cannot affect for one moment the sense of sight 
— the power to see. It affects only the expression on the plane 
of shapes. It cannot even prevent the continued operation of 
the sense in the soul. 

Remember that individuality is the true I — the eternal; 
that soul is consciousness of individuality, a consciousness that 
is to include, before it is complete, full recognition and realiza- 
tion of all that is included in and is possible to individuality ; 
that visible person is the representative of individuality, as 
figure represents number ; that soul and person constitute per- 
sonality. Then you will see that what any personality sees 
depends upon the soul, though the power to see belongs to that 
changeless Lord which is above the soul. 

So long as soul is destitute of recognition of the true 
being ; as long as it has only recognition of shapes — the 
physical body and the world — without understanding of their 
relation to what they represent, so long the " evidence of the 
senses" is misleading. The soul's conclusion is according to 
what is true to it, a conclusion far removed from the absolute 
truth. What is fact to the soul may, in its last analysis, be 
error ; for the only eternal, and therefore safe, standard of 
comparison is abstract truth. 

The fact to the soul not yet fully watered by the four 
heads of the river is : " The Sun moves, for I see it." It judges 
according to what it calls the evidence of the senses. It sees 
the Sun in the east in the morning, overhead at noon, and in 
the west at night. What it looks upon is all right, but its con- 
clusion is all wrong, and because the sense of sight being limited 
in its range of operation by the soul-capacity, reveals no more 



38 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

than " I see the Sun at one point in the morning and at an 
opposite point at night." 

When the faculties of perception and understanding, co- 
operating with the sense of sight, expand the soul, it will see 
with these faculties, and therefore will see more than it did or 
could without them. Seeing farther, it will change its conclu- 
sion about what it looks upon; the garden of the soul will be 
watered by the four heads of the river. 

We can be quite sure that our beliefs, founded upon what 
we have called the evidence of our senses, need correction, and 
that soul -sight, supplementing physical sight, is necessary to 
that end. To see farther does not mean merely to see across 
miles of space, but to see through the crust of matter and into 
the nature of Man. 

To hear more does not mean merely to hear the sounds a 
mile or hundreds of miles away, but to hear the rythmical 
vibrations of all living things, great and small, with each other 
and with their Cause — the " music of the spheres." 

To smell more is not merely to smell the odors in a distant 
part of the country, but to smell the odors of souls; for every 
soul has color, sound, and fragrance — or disagreeable odor — to 
the more expanded senses. 

To taste more is not only to detect more delicate flavors in 
material food, but to taste the flavor of one's own spiritual 
nature. " taste and see that the Lord is good." We are to 
taste and recognize every good thing in the scale of being, but 
if we will only waken from the Adam-sleep to the realization of 
eternal life we need never taste of death and the grave. Where 
are their sting and their victory for the soul that has found its 
Lord? 

To touch more is not to come into physical contact with 
many instead of few things. It is to come into contact with the 
things of God, the deep things of the spirit; to lay hold upon 
everlasting life; to lay hold upon the eternal throne and Him 
that sits thereon. It is to come so close to the Lord that we 
find ourselves in God — the wall of partition gone. 

The extension of our senses is inward rather than outward, 
for their extension is their expansion to include more of the 
real and less of the illusory. And this expansion is the growth 
of the soul that widens their range of operation. First, the 
natural; afterward, the spiritual. This law can not be reiterated 
too often, for it is a part of that order which is heaven's first law. 

Never fear that you can lose one of your five senses. They 
are spiritual senses in themselves, but in their limited operation 
with the Adam-soul they seem to be what they are named — 
Adam gives names to everything — physical senses, pertaining 
to the material organism. Recognize them for what they truly 



WHERE THE SENSES BELONG. 39 

are, instead of believing them to be what they seem, for this 
recognition is necessary for their extension. 

Learn to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch every thought 
you think. Use your senses upon the mental as well as upon 
the physical plane. You are handling a mental material which is 
to be transmuted into divine substance. Lay hold upon it with 
all your senses, and, keeping the eternal pattern steadily before 
you, mould it into the divine likeness. Keject that thought 
which is not fair to see, fragrant to smell, sweet and good to 
taste, strong to touch and lean upon; which does not give 
forth the triumphant note: " I know that my Kedeemer liveth; 
and though the worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall 
I see God." 

Watchfulness is so essential. The senses are good. None 
is evil. But are you using them, recognizing their present 
limited range of operation and how to extend it, or is that 
limitation using you and subjecting you to its consequences? 
Are you master, or are you servant? " Know ye not that ye 
are servants to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey ?" 

To be the slave of the senses as they pertain to the Adam- 
soul is to be sick and in prison, and nothing less than the Mas- 
ter can set that prisoner free. We have a standard of judg- 
ment, furnished by the Science of Being, which is unvarying, 
for it is the eternally true. Whatever the senses seem to 
declare, we have but to compare the declaration with this 
standard to know whether it is true or not. If we are master, 
instead of servant, we say, " Depart from me; I know ye not," 
when it is not in accord with that standard. 

Though all the world declare that five and five are nine, 
and though our senses reiterate the declaration as we see those 
figures on the blackboard, we know that the sum of five and 
five is ten, when we judge by the nature of the unit, instead of 
according to what we look upon, and we rest in the certainty 
that this is the only true standard of judgment. 

Do we think positive truth, or do we think according to 
appearance? Do we exercise our senses and faculties persist- 
ently, instead of letting them exercise us, so keeping the con- 
ditions for growth of the soul? Do we examine every thought 
carefully and separate the sheep from the goats? "He that 
knoweth my will and doeth it, shall be likened unto a wise 
man." That doeth it, do you see? 

There is more evidence than what we term the evidence of 
the senses. There is the evidence of our other faculties and 
powers, and their evidence controverts the other. It uncovers 
the divine and eternal for us, while the other still pertains to 
the mortal and temporal. According to which evidence are 
you rendering your verdict? You are as the judge on the bench 
listening to that evidence which comes from the interior and 



40 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

to that which comes from the exterior. According to the ex- 
terior, " That man is very ill with an incurable disease and is 
liable to die at any moment." According to the interior, "No. 
That is not true. There is no incurable disease. Every discord 
in the souFs experience has its remedy in the harmony of 
being. That condition of body is the reflection of a mental state 
and is removable by changing this state. It can be changed 
through the cultivation, of another and better one. That soul 
can be regenerated, and in this regeneration that state can be 
outgrown and left behind. That soul cannot die for it is im- 
mortal by nature. It is rooted in the eternal being, the change- 
less Lord. It can and will lose a quality imparted to it by men- 
tal states; and this is well lost, for it is not fit to survive. I 
see no disease, no death. I see only life, life in greater and 
greater measure. It is the only reality." 



SEKVANT OK MASTEK? 

All our shortcomings and limitations are understood when 
we see that the personal I is necessarily limited by the self-sense, 
while the real I, the individuality, is limitless and complete out- 
side of the sense of self. We see that our work, in the face of these 
present limitations, is to cultivate a new and higher self -sense; 
that this work can be done successfully and that its harvest is sure. 
We part company with " I can't," and form a partnership with 
" I can." 

We see why we can and we are not working in the dark. We 
see that we can and must hold that self -ideal in mind which is 
in accord with the real and eternal I, instead of that ideal which 
accords with the personal I; for this is limited to time. It has 
not the element of perpetuity till it has taken on a certain quality. 
It must die and die again, be resurrected and resurrected again 
till it has become the divine personality. 

How is this personal I thinking to-day? According to its 
natural self-sense or according to its real and eternal being — the 
Lord ? If the appearance of what it calls matter — with its various 
shapes — is its standard for thought, it is increasing and intensify- 
ing that soul-quality which eventually must disappear, and which 
will die hard because of this intensifying. If it is thinking accord- 
ing to its true being, if it has turned to the Lord, it is increasing 
that quality of soul which is eternal. 

Here is the secret of eternal life for the soul — its destiny 
because of its origin. Both mortality and immortality are condi- 
tions. The one is put off and the other is put on. The choice 
between them must be made, the work necessary to be done volun- 
tarily undertaken. The time for this is now. " Acknowledge 
the Lord in all thy ways and he will direct thy paths/' Because 
they are conditions they must pertain to that which is condi- 
tioned. 

Our real being is not conditioned by existence. It is above 
and beyond that existence which is the unfolding of its nature to 
view. It is conditioned only by its relation to its cause, and this 
relation makes it the changeless Lord of the soul. 

" I am that I am. My real being can never change or decay. 
It is from the forever to the forever. It is whole and complete, 
lacking nothing. All that God can give to it is already given. 
It has health, strength, power and peace, dominion over all things. 
Though my soul falls short of this perfection, it is being perfected 
through that Lord which worketh in me to will and to do. Though 



42 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

my soul is compassed about by the actualities of mortality and 
seems at present subject to its conditions, I know that it is being- 
delivered from them and is being brought from death unto life by 
its over-ruling Lord. 

" My soul is putting off its mortality and is putting on its im- 
mortality through the Word which I speak; for the Word is 
mighty in power. I declare my freedom from mortality and its 
conditions, whatever the appearance. That serpent has no longer 
power to beguile me into self-deception. I accept appearance 
as my standard of judgment no longer. I judge righteous 
judgment, for I judge according to my real eternal being. No 
theory based upon dust as the substance of man can turn me away 
from that freedom of the Sons of God which is mine by right; 
and which I now claim and oppose to those conditions due to the. 
limited development of my soul." 

Plant your feet upon this rock, the rock of understanding, 
and to you will be given the keys of life and death, of heaven and 
hell. And whatever you shall bind as you stand there, shall re- 
main bound; and whatever you shall unloose shall remain un- 
loosed. You are the arbiter of your own fate. The universe and 
all in it is yours. 

What shall it be to you, while it is everlastingly for you ? 
Shall it be an ascending heaven or a devouring hell? Must you 
find your heaven through your hell, ascending through torment, 
or will you descend from heaven even into what would be hell to 
others, but which is no place of torment for you because even the 
devils are subject unto you as the child of God. 

Servant or Master ? is the question to be answered by the 
soul for itself, an answer none other can give. Upon its answer 
depends whether it is bound under the law of the Old Testament; 
bound to perfect its self-knowledge only through experience, ex- 
periencing every form of suffering as the condition through which 
it eventually learns of its power to rule suffering; or whether it 
has come out from under the law and taken its stand above it — 
upon the gospel (using experience as the means by which it dem- 
onstrates its power). 

We learn under the law; we demonstrate under the gospel. 
We find our power of mastery while under the law. We prove its 
truth by actual accomplishment only as we live above the law and 
according to gospel — " the gospel of glad tidings which shall be 
for all men " ; for every soul will at some time pass from the 
old to the new dispensation. 

This time is not fixed as a certain year anno domini; and yet 
it is always the year of our Lord; for it is the time when the soul 
has learned enough through experience under the law to turn to 
its real being, with which it has all along been at war, and make 
peace with it through the true self-idea. It is the period of new 
ibirth when the soul begins to live consciously from the within 



SERVANT OR MASTER? 43 

and to be weaned from that without from which it has believed 
itself to have drawn its nourishment. 

" Except a man be born again he can not see the kingdom 
of God." The soul must be born out of its sense of matter as the 
real, because it is tangible, and into a sense of Spirit as the only 
real and supreme, even though at the present moment Spirit is in- 
tangible and must be felt after if haply it may be found. We can 
not see the spiritual, much less Spirit, with our present sense of 
sight — with its present limited range of operation. We discern it 
if we stand on the rock of understanding; and the true self -idea 
will give us the keys which open to us the kingdom of heaven 
in which we shall see the kingdom of God. 

When we rule our daily lives according to the true self-idea; 
when we hold it constantly, making every thought conform to it, 
knowing that thought generates feeling; when the feeling which 
comes from that effort rises in the soul, we enter heaven and 
dwell there; for what we are becoming in soul is in accord with 
what we are in being. And as we make ourselves at home in this 
heaven, the outer world which has been so real to us, is seen as 
only the blackboard with figures upon it, needed less and less as 
we gain the power to work our life problems mentally. We see 
it as only the projection from our own generic nature which meets 
a temporal need of the soul, to be indrawn as the soul ascends 
beyond this need. 

How are we living to-day ? In heaven or in the world ? We 
have eaten of the tree of knowledge. Have we eaten enough to 
begin to eliminate the error element? Have we eaten enough to 
see how this element is to be eliminated ? Have we learned how 
to think ? Do we see the connection between thinking and feel- 
ing ? Do we think according to our insight, or only according 
to our intellect and out sight ? 

As we think, we feel. Are we feeling the woes of the world 
or blessedness of heaven? We can look out from the peace 
and security of heaven upon the seeming woes of the world, with 
perfect equilibrium, knowing they are but the surface waves 
tossed up by contrary winds, while underneath is the strong silent 
current moving resistlessly toward the sea. Knowing this, appear- 
ances do not deceive, the serpent no longer beguiles us into self- 
deception. 

Here is a young man who is " going to the bad " you say. 
" He will never amount to anything. Steer clear of him." 

The serpent is beguiling you; you are self-deceived. You 
are looking at a temporal surface tendency and do not see that 
that soul is in the under current and is being moved resistlessly 
toward the sea of eternal life. At present it is self -deceived; and 
it thinks to find enjoyment and profit in following blindly the 
impulses of its own mortal sense. It seeks only self-gratification 
and in the ways which lie nearest to its outsight. 



44 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

It is ignorant that it is planting a seed from which it must 
sometime reap the harvest; ignorant that it is making the con- 
ditions through which it must get knowledge by experiencing 
them; ignorant that the ground it is tilling will surely bring 
forth thorns and thistles unto it. Whatever the present enjoy- 
ment, that soul is bound to suffer and needs to surfer that it may 
know. It lives in and for sensation. It must learn through sen- 
sation. Knowledge comes for the soul only through such doors 
as are open. 

But this soul has in it the germ of divinity. This germ will 
develop as sure as God is God, for it is always brooded over by the 
Most High. That weak, wicked, dissipated wretch will disappear 
and the Son of God will appear. The sinner will become the 
Saint, not by the mercy of a God who is capable of taking revenge 
for a slight, but by the necessity of his own being which is from 
God. 

What he is in being compels him to become more than he 
is in soul. As a soul, by transubstantiation he is to become the 
Christ. Literally, he is to be changed into the body and blood 
of Christ. The divine germ in him is to grow to completeness. 

Nothing can prevent it as an ultimate, no matter what the 
present surface tendency. Behind his weakness is the eternal 
strength which will never be found lacking when it is drawn upon. 
Behind his wickedness is the eternal love that waits with infinite 
patience for recognition. Behind his dissipation is that consecra- 
tion that draws all souls to their eternal home. 

All the while he acts according to the sense that betrays, 
he is acted upon by that Lord which is the same yesterday, to-day 
and forever, which is incapable of change, which is sure and 
steadfast, which is the soul's Father in heaven to whom it will 
sometime return, though as the prodigal it surfers in the far 
country. He is not " going to the bad." He is going to the good 
— to the Omnipotent Good that is God. 

Though the outer personal shape is rolling in the gutter 
covered with the filth which is found there, through this cover- 
ing may be seen, by those who have enlarged their soul-capacity, 
that which is not native to the gutter. And these know that 
sometime in the great Forever he will come to himself, arise from 
the gutter and go to the Father's house; and this even if the 
physical shape were to be found there, dead. 

Whether the visible body be used or not, the soul, always 
acted upon however it acts for itself, goes on and up. And re- 
member that this young man is a living soul now. He is not a 
material organ. This is his possession, but it is not he. Learn to 
distinguish between possessor and possession practically as well as 
theoretically, and it will be easier to judge righteous judgment. 
When we condemn the individual we but betray our own igno- 
rance. When we perceive the soul's unlikeness to the divine 



SERVANT OR MASTER? 45 

ideal, we condemn only that unlikeness and reveal our wisdom, 
manifesting our love in our effort to show it the likeness of God. 

In this wilderness of experience we lift up the serpent that 
has beguiled this soul, which has but to look upon it in its higher 
meaning, to live forever. Fortunate are we if we are able to lift it 
up for those souls who are still looking to the ground instead of 
to the heaven. Happy we, if we have suffered and so can sym- 
pathize with the sufferer. Happy we, if we have gotten the rev- 
elation of our experience which shows us the Heedlessness of 
sympathy with the suffering and the necessity for true helpful- 
ness for the sufferer. Blessed are we if we can discern the Son of 
God in the Son of Man and reconcile the one with the other, 
though we know that " the Son of Man goeth as it is written of 
him." 

But we know, too, that the soul that is spiritualized, however 
or whenever, as we with our mortal sense reckon time, this result 
may come, whether before or after what is mistakenly called 
death, is sure to overcome all backward tendencies, all obstacles, 
all the consequences of mistaken self -sense, and stand at last face 
to face with its Lord, knowing God as all in all. 

The thorns and thistles of sensation become, sometime, the 
glints and gleams of revelation. Knowing this we do not ex- 
travagantly deplore them while we stand ready to help the soul 
that is experiencing them to find this revelation. We see the 
good in all, through all, over all. We pray " Lord! keep mine — 
eyes from seeing evil." We know we help to bring out of others 
whatever we see in them and we keep our inner eye fixed upon the 
divine likeness, knowing beyond the possibility of doubt that it 
will appear. 

" There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are 
in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 

Happiness belongs to the resurrected soul. This soul has no 
need to seek happiness; it has it. 

The resurrected soul makes no supplication. It rejoices and 
gives thanks. 

The resurrected soul dwells in heaven. It ministers to those 
who have not found heaven. 

The resurrected soul has, in the world, no place to lay its 
head; for it is not of the world. J 



THE MAN AND THE WOMAN IN OUK DEEAM- 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

When we sleep at night, we dream. In our dream are people, 
places, things, pleasant and unpleasant occurrences. These are 
real to us while we are dreaming. As long as the dream lasts 
these are the only reality. Not till we begin to awaken comes the 
dawning consciousness, " This is not really so. I have been 
dreaming." 

But all the while we were dreaming, knowing only what we 
were experiencing, we were in very different surroundings and the 
people, places, and things real to us were not there. The real to 
us was the actual of the moment; and because the actual was all 
we cognized we felt that it was the all. But the real lay outside of 
the actual all the while; that real that was greater than the dream; 
that real to which the dreamer was unconsciously related while 
he was related consciously only to the actual or the dream. 

He was, all the while, more than he knew; more than he 
cognized; but his self-sense was bounded by his dream. Conse- 
quently his self-sense was far below the level of what he was out- 
side of his dream. The reality to him was only what he saw, felt, 
and knew. The reality in itself was what he was in himself, not 
what he temporarily experienced. His dream was a natural con- 
sequence of a possibility in himself— the ability to dream. 

But this faculty of dreaming, which made the dream for 
him, is not all there is of him. He is greater than it or its con- 
sequence. He has other faculties. He has the ability to recognize 
this dream for what it is, recognize its nature and source, and dis- 
criminate between a possibility temporarily actualized and a 
higher consequence of his nature to be permanently actualized. 
He is able to see that if he allows himself to be dominated by the 
dream, if he accepts it as the only reality, he is bound to what it 
contains and is shut out from that larger reality that lies outside 
the dream. 

He is able to see that the first step toward this greater free- 
dom is the perception that the dream, though real to him while it 
lasts, is not real in itself; but that its whole substance is drawn 
from his own nature; even the people, places, and things. They 
are composed of the material afforded by his own nature as a liv- 
ing being. They have no other substance, great as they seem. 
They are bounded by his own consciousness of them. 

He is the unconscious magician who by exercise of thought- 
force, not knowing its potency, has conjured up a vast procession 
which he looks upon with wonder and even fear, and believes to 
be a world outside of himself. He fears his own creations, not 



MAN AND WOMAN IN OUR DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS. 47 

knowing them to be his creations, and believing them to have 
power over him. 

Does he not suffer ? Here is a house on fire and he barely es- 
capes with his life while the flames have blistered his flesh cruelly. 
Here is a man seeking his life and he is running to a secure shelter 
as fast as his legs can carry him. Here is severe illness and friends 
are standing about him as he lies prostrate on his bed, ministering 
to him and striving to ease his pain. 

Does he not enjoy ? Here he is seated at table with a de- 
lightful company, eating and drinking, the banquet music sound- 
ing in his ears. Here he is walking in a beautiful garden with 
one whom he loves and who loves him, every step a bliss, a joy. 

His experiences are of all possible kinds, pleasant and pain- 
ful, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. But of what are they com- 
posed ? Until he awakens he does not know that they are out of 
the material afforded by his own nature. They are so real to him 
that he can not conceive their unsubstantiality till he has some- 
thing with which to compare them that the dream does not afford. 
Judged by the dream, by the dreamer's standard, they are posi- 
tively and unmistakably real, every one of them. Judged by the 
man awake, by his standard, they were temporary illusions. They 
have gone back into that substance out of which they came. 
When there is no dreamer there can be no dream. 

Whether the dream be one hour in duration, as we reckon 
time, or whether it continue threescore and ten years, it is the 
same in itself and in its relation to the man awake. 

" Awake thou that sleepest ! " 

Do you not see that what you call existence, before yo a. have 
gained the true idea of its nature and meaning, is only the dream 
as compared to that larger reality of being which lies outside 
of it? 

That all your experiences which include persons, places, and 
things, which are pleasant and painful, are but parts of the 
dream ? 

That this great world and all that goes on in it, is in your 
own nature, shaped out of its substance ? 

That, real as it is to you in these seventy years, they are but 
an instant as compared to what you are in being and to those 
greater possibilities that are in you waiting your recognition ? 

That at your word of command the world and all in it, even 
that physical body and its pains and disorders, will begin to dis- 
appear from your consciousness; vanish in proportion to your 
power over thought-creations ? 

That it will grow less and less dense till it is only a trans- 
parent veil, pierced by the shining glories beyond ? 

That as it was put out from your own being, it is taken up 
again by your own soul through recognition of its nature ? 

To see this truth is to use the world and not be used by it; 



48 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

to hold all that is now objective at its true value and not be be- 
guiled by a false value. It is to listen to the woman in ourselves 
as well as to the voice of appearance. Appearance says, " I am the 
reality. There is no other." The woman says, " You are the 
reality, ilppearance is illusion. Dream no longer." 

The man in us, the rational, reasoning nature that draws 
conclusions from what it sees objectively says, " What I see I 
know. Facts are the only reality." The intuitional nature says, 
" What you see is what you believe. You do not yet know. You do 
not discriminate between the limited fact and the greater truth, 
and cannot without my help." 

The man- Adam says, "Facts are enough." The woman- 
Adam says, " Truth, only, is sufficient. The time will come when 
the fact alone will not satisfy you. You will stand before the un- 
knowable; for you can relate your limited fact to the greater truth 
only through me. Without my help you cannot lift the veil that 
hangs between." 

The rational nature says, "I know only as I prove by ex- 
perience." The other says, " I know, before you prove in this way. 
I can teach you if you will listen to me, and you can be saved the 
experience that forces truth upon you. I am not dreaming your 
dream. Your eyes are closed, mine are open. Your experience is 
the sum of your beliefs." 

The rational nature says, " I am afraid to listen to you. I 
shall get lost in the fogs of speculation." The woman says, " Per- 
fect love casteth out fear. If you loved the truth rather than the 
limited fact, you would not fear to seek it through other avenues 
of your own nature. And you would find that it is your own in- 
tellect that continually speculates about the fact and makes you 
deaf to the truth I speak unto you. This is the mist that waters 
the whole face of the ground and obscures your vision so that you 
do not see what I can do for you. While you are thus blinded you 
must continue to till the ground, gaining the self-knowledge 
which you must have, only as you get one fact after another, 
slowly and painfully." 

The rational nature says, " If I go slowly I go surely." The 
other replies, " You are choosing to live in time rather than in 
eternity; and while this is your choice time will remain. The 
dream will continue for you because you continue to create it. 
I do not live in time, I do not dream your dream. I see the Son of 
God. You see the Son of man. I know the eternal real. You 
know only the temporary actual. I conceive truth. You are 
liable to conceive error. When you are raised from this sleep and 
dream, you will father my child." 

Thus the seed of the woman wars with the seed of the serpent 
and eventually she will conquer; for the man in us, wearied with 
the toil and pain of his quest, will turn to and listen to her and 
begin to truly live; live in that freedom which belongs to the Son 



MAN AND WOMAN IN OUK DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS. 49 

of God, no more subject to that death which pertains only to the 
Son of man. 

Do not be afraid to listen to this woman in you who draws the 
veil and reveals truth to the Soul. Do not fix your eyes immov- 
ably upon this man in you that is dreaming the dream of sense- 
consciousness and being slowly awakened through what he ex- 
periences. Both are in you and each has its office. He can 
show you the present fact. She can show you the larger reality. 
As you understand the office of each you will be able to make the 
connection between the fact and the truth, the actual and the 
everlasting real. 

You will thus bring order out of disorder, harmony out of 
discord. Out of the varied experiences of existence you will 
bring forth the grand meaning which runs through them as the 
central thread that relates them to each other. This central 
thread is the unfolding nature of your own being. Can you not 
see it ? It is two in One, a duality in unity. 

As a soul you are two-sided; you have an outer and an inner 
nature. The outer nature dreams the dream; the inner nature 
interprets the dream. But you do not hear the interpretation till 
you listen for it — while you seek it in the dream. It is not there. 

The dreamer cannot interpret his dream. The man awake 
is the interpreter. The man- Adam is in the deep sleep. The 
woman- Adam is awake. Only the one able to interpret the dream 
has mastery over it and what it contains. The dreamer is ruled 
by the dream. This is his fate. The one awake masters the fate 
with the destiny. The servant is he who obeys a tendency. The 
master is he who rules a tendency. The master is born of the 
virgin. She is the mother of all living. The servant belongs to 
the dead. 

Do not fear to follow that spirit of truth which will lead you 
into all truth. " Awake from sleep and sin not/' Stop thinking 
the dream, and believing it the truth itself because it is true to 
you. It is true only to a part of you. It is untrue to the other 
part. Begin now to live in that reality which is all around the 
dream. Pass from death unto life. 

Say to all these experiences of the dream, " I fear you not. 
I know your nature. Henceforth you have no power to deceive 
me. I see through the woman in me as well as through the man; 
and my vision has widened beyond your limitations. Unwittingly 
I have produced you. Now I withdraw from you and you must 
wither and die. Through the light which shines for me beyond 
the veil, I see through and through you. Your only reality is 
what I permit you. You are subject unto me and I claim my 
divine right of mastery over you. Depart from me, I know ye 
not. I know only the Son of the woman, the .Son of God. Unto 
me this Son is born and his name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor; and the government of you shall be upon his shoulder." 



HOW TO CAEE FOE THE BODY. 

You speak of conditions of the body. What do you mean ? 
How is the body conditioned? You say, " As long as this condi- 
tion lasts I cannot do or be more than I am now." You should 
know that until, as a living soul, you do and be more than you 
are now, the condition will last; for the law of cause and effect 
governs all conditions, even those of the body. 

Get the right relation between being, soul, and visible body. 
The being is the real I, the soul or self-consciousness is poten- 
tial in the being and developed or actualized from it; the physical 
body is the representative of the invisible. Its conditions are the 
register of the soul. Upon it appears all that goes on in the soul. 
Here what is subjective is outpictured or made objective. 

This perfect unity between the soul and the shape compels 
the appearing eventually of all that has been hidden. Soul con- 
ditions appear as bodily conditions. Apart from the soul the 
body has no conditions. It is body no longer. It falls apart, 
disintegrates, for that which integrated has withdrawn. There 
is a collapse from shape into shapelessness, for the supporting 
soul structure is gone. The soul conditions no longer appear 
on the plane of matter, though they necessarily still obtain. 

What, then, is necessary in order to change bodily condi- 
tions ? Clearly, a change in soul conditions is essential. What- 
ever is held to and in the soul is incorporated by it and becomes 
a permanent condition of body, the permanency on the plane of 
the body being determined by the permanency of the element in 
the soul. The soul can put off and put on. Whatever it puts on 
appears eventually on the body. Whatever it puts off disappears 
eventually from the body. 

Cause and effect. 

Have you anything to do with your bodily conditions ? 
You have everything to do with them, for you — if you have even 
a little true self-knowledge — can determine what you will in- 
corporate in self-consciousness. You have a mental picture- 
gallery. It is full of pictures, pleasant and unpleasant, more of 
the last than of the first, probably. The more you look at these 
pictures the more clearly they appear on the body. 

Suppose that you attend for the first time a lecture illus- 
trated with the stereopticon. As you seat yourself you see before 
you a screen. A picture appears upon it. It is very pleasant to 
look at; you like it. It fades as another appears. This one you 
do not like. It is decidedly unpleasant. 

You know nothing of how these pictures are produced. 






HOW TO CARE FOR THE BODY. 51 

You are a child in your lack of this knowledge. You know only 
what you see, and there is something in that screen which you do 
not like and wish to remove. So you examine it carefully to 
find what causes this picture, and you see no way to be rid of it 
but to get it out of the screen. Clearly, the way to accomplish 
this is to work with the screen. 

Is not that of which you wish to be rid, right there ? Do 
you not see it ? You have the evidence of your senses; is not 
that enough ? So you rub away, using one thing after another, 
as each fails to remove the picture, though at times it is not as 
clear as at first, and you cover portions of it with the implements 
you use and even with your own hands. 

Perhaps after a time the revelation of experience comes to 
you. You cannot thoroughly and permanently remove it. Do 
what you will, at least portions of it still stare you in the face, 
poke out in mockery beyond what you are handling. You begin 
to ask, "Why is this ? There must be a cause for this picture 
which I have not discovered and do not know how to remove." 

" Blessed art thou " when this time comes. Now another 
door than that of the senses is opened in you and you can receive 
the evidence of other faculties and powers which you possess as 
well as that of the senses. You stop rubbing the screen — fortu- 
nately it has felt no discomfort during this operation, but you 
have — and you look about to see if there is not something more 
than the screen. You find in the rear of the hall the apparatus 
which throws the picture upon the screen, and in the lantern- 
slide the picture that is reflected there. 

Now you have made an important discovery. Well for you 
if you are ready to act upon it. The real picture is not in the 
screen at all, though it seemed to be a component part of it. It 
is just a little thing within the lantern, but ! how big its con- 
sequences are. You find it is this little thing you have to deal 
with and not with the screen; and all your brushes, and cloths, and 
lotions, and scouring powders are unnecessary. You withdraw 
the picture from the lantern-slide and, lo ! it has disappeared 
from the screen. 

You have the little thing in your hand, but where has the 
big picture gone ? What has become of it, that unpleasant thing 
you tried so hard to remove? How unsubstantial it must have 
been to disappear so completely. But what shall you do with 
the little picture in your hand ? If it gets back into the lantern, 
it will surely reappear upon the screen. You had better destroy 
it; then there is no more danger. 

And then another revelation flashes upon you. Your per- 
ception and understanding are at work as well as your senses. If 
you want a certain picture to appear upon the screen, you have 
but to place it in the lantern-slide. 

Eureka ! You are master of the situation. You have found 



52 HOW WE MASTER OUR EATE. 

the better, the effectual, way, not only to remove what has ap- 
peared, but to cause to appear what you will. Whereas I was 
blind, now I see, you say. 

This illustration shows us the nature of bodily conditions 
as they are explained by the Science of Being. Our thoughts 
form our mental states, our mental pictures. These are reflected 
upon the passive screen, .the outer body. There is no condition 
of body apart from mentality. Without the direct action of the 
mentality upon this body there is that falling apart which is the 
opposite of embodiment and which is called disintegration. 
From the within to the without is the eternal order. 

With this discovery you will see that the whole matter is in 
your own hands, even though a tendency you have ignorantly set 
up and perpetuated persists for a time as you make your efforts 
to set up a new tendency — to govern your thinking instead of 
letting it govern you. You will see that for the body to be well 
the mental states must be well; and that as thinking begets feel- 
ing and thinking and feeling decide mental states, the thinking 
must be well, or sound and true, for the body to reflect health or 
harmony instead of the undesirable. 

You will see that the way to take care of the body is to take 
care of that which is more than the body; and that it is useless 
to expect constant bodily health as long as the soul is not in 
health, but holds within it discordant mental states instead, 
which induce the pictures before the eyes of the soul. The eyes 
should be fixed upon the true being, upon its wholeness, perfect- 
ness, power, and beauty; upon its allness, which makes everything 
else comparative nothingness. What it sees appears. 

Get to work with your picture-gallery and clear it of rubbish. 
You have many family portraits there. Your father and grand- 
father and great-grandfather had gout, and so of course you must 
have gout. That picture hangs there and you look at it till it 
appears. It is pleasant and fair to look upon, is it not? You 
sit down with your physical foot bandaged and propped on a chair, 
saying, " 0, dear me ! " instead of throwing that family portrait 
out of the house. 

It is your inner foot of understanding that is bound all 
about with belief in heredity, theories, and opinions founded on 
a false premise, so that you do not stand upon and use it. It is 
you, a mortal-sense soul, that are living in a dead past instead 
of an active present, swollen with the conceit of family pride 
and too lazy — yes, too lazy — to work out your salvation from a 
sense of suffering. When you have suffered enough to batter 
down your pride, and make your cry go up unto God by reason 
of your bondage, the Moses in you will look upon your burdens 
and lead you to the land of freedom. 

For generations mortal thought has been creating forms of 
disease and naming them. You hear these names and turn and 



HOW TO OAKE FOR THE BODY. 53 

look at the pictures in your mental picture-gallery which bear 
them. They are all labelled very clearly, accurately, and care- 
fully. The labels are kept well polished, so there can be no mis- 
take. You think the picture you look at often enough into ex- 
pression in the body. To this end you have the help of all who 
are looking at the same picture. A strong mental current sets 
in this direction. Unresisting you go with the stream till you 
begin to individualize your soul. 

When you are ready to make this beginning there is a 
picture away in a dark corner of your gallery which is suddenly 
unveiled to you. You have never seen it before because of the 
rubbish which has accumulated there. As you throw out the rub- 
bish the light penetrates to this dark corner and there bursts 
upon you the face of the Master. How grand, how majestic, how 
beautiful ! Look upon it daily, you cannot view it often enough. 

" Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and sub- 
due it." 

" You have manifested the fruit of your sense-nature," 
he says, "but you are not yet full of fruit. You have a higher 
nature, higher powers, and faculties which are to bring forth 
their fruit, and this also is to be manifested. You are to multiply 
your self-consciousness, increase it to more and more, and now 
you see the way. The manifestation which you are making of 
your nature is to be replenished, for, so far, it falls short of that 
glorious destiny which is your birthright. You have shown 
your power to suffer; now you are to show your power to conquer 
suffering. 

That " earth " is to be subdued and the new earth is to 
appear. You are equal to this subduing. Dominion over every 
living thing is yours. Establish this dominion unto yourself by 
beginning to rule instead of serve. Serve only the Most High; 
rule all else. Your sense-nature is meat for you by which you 
grow to your full stature. You see Me now afar off, but as you 
consume this meat you come unto Me. Have no fear, for lo ! I 
am with you alway even unto the end of the world." 

A woman sat at her study window above the surrounding 
roofs, and looked far out toward the sea. Fleeting grey clouds 
pierced with towers and steeples, broken into waves by countless 
chimneys, impeded her view. As she gazed, these rigid lines 
melted into the clouds which grew lighter and whiter, losing 
their grey tone. Points of light, light unlike the rays of the sun, 
soft yet brilliant, appeared. Gradually they flowed together till 
light that was alive filled the whole horizon. Then dark specks 
appeared, and suddenly a crown of thorns hung: framed within 
it. Tears sprang to her eyes, and a voice said, " Who is the King 
of glory ? " And the woman answered, " He 'who has mastered 
the thorns and worn the crown." 



THE GEEMS OF DISEASE. 

Did the suggestiveness of the modern germ theory of disease 
ever strike you ? So many diseases are now traced to a germ 
which in former years were attributed to other causes. 

From the metaphysical point of view, following the prin- 
ciples of the Science of Being, not only all diseases but all discom- 
fort and unhappiness are traceable to germs. But fortunately 
the way to render them innocuous is also revealed. 

First, let us consider the physical theory and see if we cannot 
trace a parallel between it and the metaphysical. Disease results 
from a germ which, taken by any means into the system, will 
induce such condition unless the system can resist its action. 
Eesults will be according to susceptibility. With no suscepti- 
bility no sickness will ensue. 

Here, but little examination is needed to show us that what 
really determines the result is not the nature and power of the 
germ but the degree of susceptibility. Did the germ possess the 
determining power, susceptibility or non-susceptibility would not 
matter; and whoever became impregnated by it would inevitably 
suffer the consequence, which would be exactly the same in all 
respects for those who were infected by the same germ. 

This not being the case, results vary. One is a very serious 
case, another is a mild case and again there is no case at all, though 
three individuals have been exposed to the impregnating condi- 
tions at the same time. Susceptibility, then, is what needs investi- 
gation rather than the germ. The cultivation of non-suscepti- 
bility seems of more importance than the cultivation of germs. 

And here we are obliged to enter the metaphysical domain. 
"What makes us susceptible to the action of germs ? Can we con- 
trol this susceptibility ? If so, how ? Will living upon a certain 
diet, breathing a certain amount or certain quality of air, taking 
such and such medicines, or abstaining from them, accomplish 
it ? If the power to rule resides in any of these things the results 
must be alike to all who employ them, for law is no respecter of 
persons. But we do not see this impartiality. Under the same 
apparent conditions one is ill, another well; one recovers from sick- 
ness while another sickens. We must look deeper. 

Let us apply the principles of the Science of Being. If it 
seems our fate to be ill and suffer, let us endeavor to rule our fate 
with our destiny. Our being is above even the possibility of sick- 
ness and death. It can never be infected by germs. The real I 
can never be changed from what its Cause makes it. It is sus- 
tained eternally by that supreme Cause and no harm can come 
nigh it. It is Lord over all less that it. It is whole, complete. 



THE GERMS OF DISEASE. 55 

But the soul is not yet complete actually, though it is whole 
potentially. It is in process of " becoming " from the potential 
to the actual. It is therefore temporarily conditioned. As the 
potential or subsistent Self in the Lord, " hidden in the bosom 
of the Father from the beginning," it is unconditioned; but as it 
develops, or becomes the actual Self, it is conditioned by the stages 
of its growth and subject to their limitations. 

Disease is a condition. It can pertain, therefore, only to that 
which is conditioned, and its remedy is a contrary condition. A 
higher condition must destroy a lower condition, and a higher 
condition must come from more growth — is a greater growth or 
development. 

It is a long step forward when we not only see but begin to 
feel that the visible physical body is not the seat of disease but 
only the plane of its visibility. By the relation of subjective and 
objective, the objective body is the means by which is made 
visible what is held in the subjective soul. If there be the power 
to cast out of the soul what has been held within it, it follows that 
there must be, eventually, corresponding disappearance from the 
objective body. 

What we need to observe, then, is the nature of the soul, its 
relation to the being and to the visible body, why and how it is 
conditioned, and how its conditions can be changed. We need 
give attention neither to the being nor body. 

The sense-soul or Adam is subject to the conditions imposed 
upon it by its own ignorance of the nature of being. It lives in 
and according to sensation. Although it draws its vitality from 
the being, it is open to impressions through the senses, suggestions 
to which it is passive till it begins to awaken through knowledge 
to a higher possibility. As a soul it is in and surrounded by the 
atmosphere as relative to it as the physical atmosphere is relative 
to the physical body. 

Our visible bodies are immersed in an ocean of air which is 
within them, around them, and through them, always in motion. 
As souls we are immersed in a finer atmosphere, not detected by 
the tests which reveal the coarser, and which is within us, around 
us, and through us, always in motion. 

Our physical atmosphere is pure in itself or in its original 
elements; but it is made impure by additions to it, by personal 
emanations. The atmosphere of a room filled with people and 
closed so tightly that no fresh air can enter it, becomes vitiated — 
according to mortal sense — and unfit to breathe because it has its 
life-giving properties withdrawn by those in the room who give to 
it instead their own exhalations with whatever these contain. 

Every one in the room inhales as an individual his quota of 
the atmosphere and adds to it as independently his quota of 
personal emanations. Consequently, each occupant inhales not 
only the air as such, but the emanations of all the others. 



Ob HOW WE MASTER OUK FATE. 

Here we see that the air of the room is the common receptacle 
and reservoir from which comes to the individual — through his 
own action, breathing — the germs or emanations of others which 
they have put into the atmosphere belonging to all. The atmos- 
phere is not in the least to blame, there is no moral question in- 
volved. It is simply the order of nature. 

But the individual is bound by this order no longer than he 
is passive to it. He can let fresh air into the room, put his head 
out of the window to get some, or leave the room and get into the 
outer air. If he continues to breathe the poisoned air, the poison- 
ous element enters his lungs and, therefore, penetrates his physical 
body and leaves its deposits. Consequences ensue which would 
not occur did he possess the knowledge — and act upon it — of how 
to avoid them. 

To stop breathing so that the emanations of others could not ' 
enter his physical body, is not the way out of the difficulty. He 
has to breathe. He cannot stop breathing. He is compelled to 
breathe because he is alive. And because he is alive he can choose 
what he will breathe. He can get the fresh air if he will. 

The soul-atmosphere is filled with the emanations of- souls, 
the thoughts which humanity has been thinking for generations. 
It is full of these germs, loaded with them. All the mortal be- 
liefs of Adam-souls are in this storehouse and we breathe in that 
atmosphere constantly, inhaling, drawing into the soul-organ- 
ism the germs of all kinds of sickness, suffering, and death; for 
these thoughts are the germs with which the soul is inoculated 
and which breed their consequences so long as the soul is suscep- 
tible to them. 

And the soul is susceptible so long as it is passive to sense- 
impressions, so long as it remains the Adam-soul. While this 
passivity continues the human race is bound to be disease-ridden, 
for the causes of disease are constantly at work and effects must 
follow. Not till resistance to thought-germs instead of passivity 
becomes the order, will disease disappear, for the soul leaves it 
behind through growth, and in no other way. 

We hear the dread word " consumption." Lacking under- 
standing, we are impressionable. It calls up a mental picture 
with us. The occasion is furnished for the fructifying of the 
germ in the mental atmosphere. We are passive or susceptible 
to it. We are inoculated and in time it reaches visible expression 
on the plane of the body. 

Susceptibility to disease is nothing more nor less than pas- 
sivity to it, and is mental rather than physical. It is a mental 
state and the remedy is the opposite mental state which can be cul- 
tivated. The prayer " ! Lord ! take this away from me ! " 
will avail nothing, permanently, if our susceptibility is allowed 
to continue. 

Here is where our own power lies. We can cultivate resist- 



THE GERMS OF DISEASE. 67 

ance if we will. First, self-knowledge, then application of that 
knowledge instead of an additional passivity — expecting the Lord 
to do it all for us. As souls we must breathe. Our thinking is 
our mental breathing. We cannot stop this mental breathing 
if we wish to, but we can choose how we will think, what we will 
think. 

We need not go on adding our personal emanations, our 
mortal-sense thoughts to the common stock; and if we do not 
think these thoughts, we are not as susceptible to the action of 
this kind of thought-germs. Like attracts like. This is why we 
become able to resist the action of these germs when we govern 
our thinking. We attract the higher and purer, the life-giving 
germs, when we think the true, instead of the sense thought. 

We have to learn to think contrary to sense-impressions in- 
stead of according to them, and then we breathe the breath of life 
instead of the breath of death. Then we awaken out of sleep, 
arise from the dead. Every thought we think goes from us into 
the mental or soul atmosphere. According to its kind will be the 
reflex action upon ourselves; and the effect upon all souls will be 
according to their susceptibility. What we exhale we inhale. 

Either the breath of death or the breath of life leaves its 
deposits — the germs — in the soul-organism, which work to visible 
expression in the body. As Adams we are subject to the con- 
sequences of the breath of death, and they are many and various 
as mortal sense has labelled them. 

" As in Adam we all die, so in Christ are we made alive." 

When we learn how to mentally breathe, how to think, and 
put our knowledge into practice, the Christ has come to the 
soul, making it alive where before it was " dead in trespasses and 
sins." We can be inoculated with eternal life as readily as with 
death. Which do we choose ? We can become as susceptible 
to immortality as to mortality; to the freedom of the sons of God 
as to the thorns and thistles of the ground. 

The thoughts of Jesus of Nazareth through whom was man- 
ifest the Christ of God, are in our soul-atmosphere now; and these 
germs of mastery of mortal conditions and eternal life are able 
to germinate in our souls now and beget their conditions if we 
make ourselves susceptible to them by first making ourselves non- 
susceptible to the mortal-sense germs. 

The whole matter is in our own hands and until the divorce 
which has for so long obtained between science and religion be- 
comes inoperative, until it is as much a religious duty to be free 
from disease as it is a scientific possibility, the world will be dis- 
ease-ridden and the professing Christian will continue to bear his 
afflictions with resignation because God sends them upon him. 

Suffering, disease, and death are but the temporal possibility 
for the soul because of its connection with being and inherent 
tendency to unf oldnlent. 



THE POWEE AND POWERLESSNESS OF 
HEREDITY. 

One of the most prolific causes of the continuance of suffer- 
ing and all that is called evil is the belief in the power of 
heredity. 

Even moral reformers and philanthropists run against this 
rock in their efforts at betterment of general conditions. And 
rock indeed it is in its immovableness, not because of its own 
inherent power but because of the general consent to what is 
ignorantly claimed for it. 

Heredity is a fact, it is nonsense to ignore it. It is much 
better to understand it and thus learn how to deal with it. 
Fortunately it is not the only fact. There are others. They 
modify each other. None of them is the absolute truth. 

We will do well if we always keep in mind the distinction 
between a fact and the truth. A fact is relative. The truth is 
absolute. The truth is always more than a fact, it involves many 
facts. The truth is unlimited, a fact is always limited by its re- 
lation to other facts. 

When we deal with the truth, we deal with the ideal. 
When we deal with the fact we are dealing with the actual. How 
to make a logical enduring relation between the two, satisfactory 
to both reason and the heart and demonstrable in daily life, or 
how to be practical, is the question of the hour. 

This question will not be satisfactorily answered by that 
which ignores either the truth or the fact. Witness the many 
statements made in late years and falsely called " scientific." 

But by being able to see the relation of the fact to the 
truth, of the actual to the ideal, and working according to this 
relation, we may continually push the fact nearer and nearer 
to the truth; for the fact is movable or adjustable, the truth is 
unyielding. 

To repeat — heredity is a fact. It is true that diseases and 
immoral tendencies appear in the same family from generation 
to generation; and because this is true, comparative freedom 
from disease and immorality can appear in the same family from 
generation to generation. 

If a process of transmission is steadily going on, this process 
is neither good nor bad. It is neutral. It is the working of law. 
Its results will be either good or bad as compared with each 
other. A doorway is without quality, we will say, but through 
it may appear either an angel of light or a demon of darkness. 
The doorway is the same in itself, whichever comes through it. 

Heredity is the continued transmission of tendencies, and 
hence the most desirable as well as the undesirable can be trans* 



THE POWER AND POWERLESSNESS OF HEREDITY. 59 

mitted. We are talking now on the side of the actual, and are not 
ignoring the ideal, only seeking to get that relation between the 
two which shall enable us to master fate. 

As there can be no objective action without preceding sub- 
jective action, no deed without thought; as the outer body is the 
means for the soul's expression, bodily conditions are made sub- 
jectively before they appear objectively. Moral conditions are 
made subjectively before they appear outwardly. Let us say 
also in passing that spiritual conditions must be made sub- 
jectively before they can appear as a transfiguration of the fleshly 
man. 

Heredity, in its last analysis, is neither more nor less than 
the transmission of thought tendencies. This man is a hereditary 
Methodist. His family for generations have been Methodists. 
He was brought up to believe in Methodist doctrine, was told it 
was true — and, perhaps, that other doctrine was false — and he 
has accepted as truth what he was told was true. 

The trend of his family life and environment makes him the 
unquestioning Methodist if he does not exercise his own indi- 
viduality, examine the doctrine given him as positive truth, and 
make up his own mind as to whether it is true or not. 

When he has given his own assent from conviction, after an 
impersonal examination of the doctrine, unbiased by the family 
trend, he is a voluntary and not a hereditary Methodist. In the 
first case he is mastered by a tendency. In the second he has 
mastered it. 

We all know it is easier to be mastered than to master, 
whether it be our religion, our morals, or our conditions that are 
in question. We also know, if we have even a little wisdom, 
that it is sure to be either the one or the other with us. 

Here is another man who is a hereditary rascal. His father 
and grandfather were rascals, men who preyed upon their fellow- 
men, without heart or conscience. They created a mental ten- 
dency, thievery and knavery in thought, set up a mental current 
sure to draw into it anything that could be drawn. 

This man as a boy was passive to this tendency, and has 
embodied it in his turn, swelling the current which will draw 
into itself more and more till it is checked by a counteracting 
tendency. And this man, rascal though he is practically, can 
set up this counteracting tendency any moment he chooses; for 
because of what he is in being, the power to resist, overcome, or 
create is in him. 

His heredity from God is more than his heredity from the 
flesh. He has but to gain the knowledge of what his higher 
heredity is and choose to act with it instead of with the other, 
act subjectively, to gain mastery of the fleshly heredity. 

Whether it be morals or physical conditions that need cor- 
rection, they are what they are always for the same reason — the 



60 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

master is " asleep in the hinder part of the boat." Awaken him. 
At his word the tempest of misunderstood and ungoverned sense- 
impulses and the havoc they create, will cease, for he knows the 
power of the Word and speaks it with authority. 

Here is another man who is suffering from chronic dyspep- 
sia. He has a very delicate stomach. He has always had a very 
delicate stomach. His progenitors for generations have had very 
delicate stomachs. Life is a misery. If he could only eat one 
square meal of anything and everything he wanted! What hap- 
piness, he thinks, can a man have in life cursed with such an 
inheritance as his? 

All the trouble with him is that he is not really acquainted 
with his inheritance. He has been ignorantly passive to a 
thought tendency transmitted from generation to generation. 
Through this passivity he has been susceptible to the action of 
thought germs, and especially to this particular kind because of 
his environment. 

They have bred their consequences in him, and he has be- 
come the blind slave of heredity, the master in him fast asleep. 
And so long as this master continues to sleep he will add to and 
intensify the fleshly heredity, sending it along to the next gen- 
eration, because he does not set up a counteracting tendency. 

Our heredity from the eternal I Am is the absolute truth 
which changes not and which underlies all our outward facts. 
These are true as far as they go, but they are limited in their 
present and potential power. 

Outside of all the misconceptions and blunders made by the 
student of mathematics, which originate with him, stands that 
eternal and immutable truth, the nature of the unit, and which 
did not originate with him. His misconceptions and blunders 
will hold him to their consequences, he will be bound to experi- 
ence them, till he turns to that changeless principle and elects to 
stand by it. 

" Know ye not that ye are servants to whom ye yield your- 
selves servants to obey? " 

To whom ye yield yourselves. Here is the key to the whole 
matter. As Adam-souls we ignorantly yield ourselves to the 
illusion of appearances and the prompting of sense-impulses. 
Sometime, after experience has scourged us and we surfer its 
stripes and wounds, we begin to inquire: "Why do I suffer? " 
And when we believe the answer, " Because you have to. It is 
the common lot. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
children," we must have still more stripes and wounds; suffer, 
not forever, but only till we find out that the master of suffering 
is in the boat with us, has been there all the while. 

Then, seeing what we are in being, seeing our changeless 
heredity from God, whatever the appearance on the plane of 
sense, we turn to and awaken this master who rules all through 



THE POWER AND POWERLESSNESS OF HEREDITY. 61 

his divine Son-ship. We claim our higher inheritance — health, 
joy, peace, wholeness. We have had enough of halfness. We 
connect our personality with our eternal individuality, no longer 
separate, but one. 

Our personality no longer embodies merely the thought 
tendencies of the Adam-soul. It begins to embody the higher 
thought tendencies of the higher soul. It begins to incarnate 
the Son of God. It puts off the fleshly heredity and puts on the 
divine. 

When we make this connection, when we see the fact in its 
proper relation to the higher truth, we use the law and are no 
longer its passive servant. The son uses by right. The servant 
is used by necessity. 

As the son, recognizing and putting to practical use our 
inherent dominion over all things, we help to redeem others as 
well as ourselves from the " curse." Our new thought tendency, 
counteractive of the old, gives us individually better conditions, 
and helps to lessen the common ills of humanity. 

It is a glorious thing to know that every effort we make for 
ourselves is equally an effort for the whole race; that by the very 
law of cause and effect our thought, redeemed and purified, is a 
saviour of men as well as of our own souls. 

Are you setting up a thought tendency which will cause the 
old heredity to disappear and the God-heredity to appear? Stop 
complaining of your dyspepsia and excusing your ill-nature on 
the ground of heredity. Get up and go to work. 



WORDS AS STOEAGE BATTERIES. 

If you would be master where you have been subject you 
must learn the power of words and how to utilize it. 

Till the soul is awakened to its birthright we do not dream 
of this power, or that because of our ignorant use of it we have 
been making our experience. But we have groaned over this 
experience, an ! dear ! with every breath, and wished our- 
selves out of it, someway, somehow, no matter what way or how 
so we were rid of it. 

We have prayed that it might pass from us, not realizing that 
we had to pass from it, that we, as souls, must keep the Passover 
to the end. We have been blind to our own inherent ability to 
make experience, to regenerate ourselves. 

But you are one who is awakening to this fact. You do not 
want to remain bound to environment, hereditary tendencies, 
poverty, weakness, suffering. You want to master these and get 
them under foot, and you see faint glimmerings of wonderful 
possibilities in this direction. The wonder of it almost takes your 
breath and you say " Can I really stand free from these conditions 
which have bound me so long ? Is this possible while the whole 
world groans under them ? " 

It is possible. Freedom is a possibility. But there is one 
grand essential. " The truth shall make you free." This is what 
accomplishes the freedom — the truth. It is very simple. 

When the boy is working his mathematical problem, the 
truth is the remedy for the mistakes he has unwittingly made. 
He pegs away hour after hour, bound to the consequences of these 
mistakes, his work coming to naught so far as the correct answer 
is concerned, till he makes a discovery, till he sees the truth that 
reveals the mistake. 

But this truth was, it subsisted all the while his error ex- 
isted. And all this time it was waiting to be manifested; but it 
could not appear in its unlikeness, in the error, could not appear 
at all. Why not ? Because it had to be known. 

" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." 

Though the truth frees us from bondage, from subjection 
to fate, this freedom will not be our conscious possession till we 
find or know it. This is the first step. Then comes the second — 



WORDS AS STORAGE BATTERIES. 63 

apply the truth. Apply it to the error to be removed, to the 
condition to be overcome. 

What must this boy do when he makes his discovery ? 
When he finally sees that truth which reveals his error ? He 
must use it. To contemplate it is not enough. He may be de- 
lighted to find it and look at it, so delighted that he shouts 
Hallelujah ! But if he only keeps on shouting Hallelujah ! 
he will not accomplish his work. Even this natural result of 
his discovery may be a stumbling-block in his way if he does not 
look out. 

He has something to do, now that he has found the truth, 
something that he has never done before. He has to apply it to 
his problem. And it is only through his work of application that 
he becomes practically free, not only from his previous mistakes, 
but from their consequences. 

Now take this illustration right home to yourself. Your 
bondage is the consequence of your own, and the racial, errors, 
made when you were ignorant of the truth of being. This truth 
can make you free from it. The power to make free is inherent 
in the truth. Latent energy is locked up in truth, an energy that 
is resistless. 

What then is to be done ? This energy must be released. 
It is like a great storage battery. Eesistless force is stored there, 
but it must be set flowing, and whatever this current acts upon 
is bound to move. Here is where your part of the work lies, a 
work that cannot be accomplished except you do your part. 

You have found the truth. You see this wonderful and 
glorious truth of being that shows you the eternal real of your- 
self. You see, too, the temporal actual, the problem on the slate 
with its incorrect answer. You stand between the two, a medi- 
ator if you will. 

You can turn your back upon the slate and give yourself 
to the contemplation of " this beautiful truth " and you will have 
a real good time — while your contemplation lasts unbroken. But 
it will be broken some day because you have simply hypnotized 
yourself, and when you turn around again the problem on the 
slate still confronts you. 

You have yet to apply the truth which you know through 
seeing; for you have to know it through doing as well. And 
your knowing is not perfected till you have done as well as seen. 
You have to fulfil the New Testament as well as the Old. 

When we see the truth, " unto us a son is born . . . and 
the government shall be upon his shoulder." But this power of 
government must be exercised in order to be proved; and it must 
be proved to be manifested. This " son " must be manifest in 
the flesh. It is your doing, your application or use of the truth 
you see that will " order and establish " it. 



64 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

You have to prove the power of the truth of being to bring 
to the soul freedom from the bondage of sense-conditions by 
your own use of it to that end. Here, you are working according 
to the New Testament. " Faith, without works is dead." 

If you see now what is necessary for freedom, for regenera- 
tion of self-consciousness, we can find out what to do and how to 
do it. First, the truth makes free; therefore we must find the 
truth — we must know it. Second, we must know it through 
doing subsequent to knowing by seeing. 

What shall you do ? Speak true words and refrain from 
speaking error words. 

"What are error words ? Those utterances which are con- 
trary to the nature of the eternal individuality and which express 
only the mistaken mortal sense. 

What are true words ? Those utterances which express the 
nature of the eternal and perfect individuality. 

What does it matter how I speak if this truth is fixed and, 
changeless ? How you speak has no effect whatever upon the 
truth itself, but has marked effect upon yourself, for " according 
to thy word be it unto thee." The truth cannot free you till you 
speak it, till it is your word. 

Why ? Because its latent energy has to be released. 
" Whom will ye that I release unto you ? " And the energy or 
power of the word is released, or made operative for you, when 
you speak it. 

All words, true words and error words, are storage batteries. 
They contain energy. This is the occult power of words. You 
as a speaker of words, the mediator between that energy and its 
result, release it to do the work belonging to it. See to it that you 
do not release Barabbas the robber, the power of the error word 
that will keep you from your birthright as a child of God. 

Take care, rather, that by speaking true words you open 
the way for your own perfect being to be manifested. When you 
speak words you are dealing with a mighty force, the force that 
creates. ■ Your spoken word is the utterance of your mental 
word or thought. When your thought is uttered, energy is re- 
leased or has a wider circuit to move in. 

Eventually the error thought must be rooted out, but it can 
first be checked, and by checking the uttered word. " The 
tongue is an unruly member " because we have allowed ourselves 
to speak from impulse. We rule it as we train ourselves to speak 
from perception. 

You can begin to establish that freedom which is possible 
for you, because it belongs to the truth of being, this very moment 
by speaking or uttering what you ever so dimly see, as opposed 
to what you at present ever so strongly feel. You oppose the 
truth to the error. You check the activity of the energy of the 






WORDS AS STORAGE BATTERIES. 65 

error word by checking its utterance. You check and lessen 
its creation. You release the energy of the true word by speak- 
ing it, and you forward its creation. 

This much you can do if you are the merest novice in these 
things. You can be watchful and exercise control over your 
tongue. This will lead to watchfulness and control over your 
thoughts. This will lead to control of creative energy; and this, 
in turn, to control of condition. 

The way for the mastery of fate is prepared. All we have 
to do is to walk in it. And we walk in it when we see the line of 
destiny and follow it unswervingly. We are destined to conscious 
divinity. With our destiny we master our fate. 

How are you speaking now ? This way, probably. " ! 
dear ! I am so weak and lifeless I cannot possibly go down town 
to-day. I know that errand ought to be done but I cannot do it. 
I have not the strength." 

You have released Barabbas the robber. You will feel more 
weak and lifeless than you did before, probably, because you have 
given a wider circuit of operation to the energy stored in those 
words. You should have shut off the current and turned on an- 
other one. You should have set the truth to work for you. In- 
stead, you have opened the way for error to accumulate itself. 

Speak true words and you will say, " I am not really weak 
and lifeless. That is only mortal sense, and this sense has no 
more power over me than I permit. Because of what I am in my 
real being I am full of strength and life this moment. I am in 
everlasting unity with the infinite Life. I am fed corstantly 
from that great reservoir and I cannot exhaust the supply. Noth- 
ing can cut it off. It is flowing into me now and filling me with 
vigor and power. My vitality is eternal and sufficient for all right 
demands. I am able to do all that belongs to me to do. I am 
able to go down town. My body is not I. It is my servant and 
it obeys the word. My feet will move whereunto they are sent. 
In the strength of the Lord I shall accomplish it." 

Speak right words, check the utterance of error words, 
speak them because you begin to perceive the truth of being and 
want to feel it, and you have taken upon you the yoke of the 
Christ. 

You have linked your soul with the immutable truth and 
your word will be made flesh. What you declare will appear as 
condition. Where before your work was hard labor, now it is 
light and no labor, for that truth is pulling the load with you. 

It is yoked to you even as you are united with it. Its energy 
is increasing your own momentum in the right direction. You 
are steadily outgrowing old conditions and leaving them behind. 
Only as you outgrow them will they cease to have place in your 
consciousness. 



THE OKIGHST OF EVIL. 

Do you believe in two equal powers forever contending with 
each other ? Then it is no wonder you are at war with yourself 
and with all the world. You will remain at war as long as you be- 
lieve this. 

What but perpetual warfare can result from the clashing of 
two equal powers, good and evil ? Victory can belong to neither. 
This is self-evident. When one or the other appears to triumph, 
it can be only luck, not law. 

With this belief you have no firm ground under your feet. 
No wonder you stagger and fall and bruise yourself. Do a little 
thinking and you will see how impossible it is for these powers to 
be equal if there is law instead of luck. One must be stronger 
than the other. 

Evil is the greater, do you say ? And because you see so 
much of it in the world ? Because it obtrudes itself upon you, 
look which way you will ? 

In midwinter you see snow and ice and cold all about you. 
Wherever you look the thick blanket presses down upon the earth 
and buries all the greenness you would like to see. There is 
nothing but cold snow, you say, no warmth anywhere. But that 
very snow that is so cold to you is a warm covering for the plant- 
life below, protecting it till its time comes to shoot forth into bud 
and blossom. And the sun still shines steadily above. 

You know, because experience has proved it to you, other- 
wise you might not, that in due season the ice and cold will dis- 
appear and that which was covered will appear. And come forth 
the more abundantly because of that which appeared undesirable, 
and even evil, to you. 

So when you look out into the world the good seems to be 
covered so thickly with evil that but few indications of its pres- 
ence pierce the crust. But it is there. 

" Overcome evil with good." 

If a victory is possible one power must be the stronger. If 
evil is stronger than good, progress for an individual, a nation, a 
race is impossible. Steady retrogression and annihilation must 
be the order. But we do not see this steady retrogression. On 
the contrary we see the reverse. Then good must be stronger than 
evil and consequently the power to be used to the removal of evil. 






THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 67 

What is the origin of evil ? Why is it permitted ? What a 
vexed question to settle is this mystery of evil ! And yet for those 
who can see, how simple it is ! 

Is God the author of evil ? No. 

Where then did it come from if God made everything that 
was made ? It never was made in the sense of a creation by God. 

What is Creation according to the Science of Being ? It is 
the Expression and Manifestation of God. Evil neither expresses 
nor manifests God. It expresses and manifests our ignorance of 
God. 

Here, right here, is its origin. It is a parasite which feeds 
upon and is sustained by human ignorance. It will come to an 
end only as its nourishment ceases. As souls, living souls remem- 
ber, we have been ignorant of our true and eternal being that 
images or expresses God. This ignorance is natural because the 
Adam or sense-soul cannot have, all at once, the knowledge which 
is the product of its growth. 

This first soul — first in the sense of order, not as a beginning 
in time — is pure and undefiled. It is all right in every respect and 
there is no evil in it or anywhere else. But it is very small as 
compared to what it is to be. It is only " I am " or " I am con- 
scious that I exist." 

That is all, and that is good. There is nothing wrong about 
it. It is Adam before the fall, the primal innocence of the soul. 
But a self -idea must be conceived by the soul. It is very natural 
that if we are conscious that we are, we shall begin to form some 
idea as to what we are. 

The self -sense uttered in " I am " compels some idea about 
what I am. This is a natural sequence because of the nature of 
soul. The limitations of this first soul — it is a very little one — in- 
duce a limited self -idea because the self-sense is so limited. And 
this limited and mistaken self -idea begets all that we call evil. 

Right here is its origin; and with the true self -idea begins 
also its destruction. 

The amount of evil you see in the world, the proportion be- 
tween good and evil, depends upon your self-idea. They belong 
together. When you see so much evil around you, you are seeing 
through a pair of spectacles which lend their own coloring to what 
you see. 

What is your self-idea ? What are you ? You know that 
you are, that you exist. But what are you ? What is man ? A 
being born some years ago to die some years hence, and meanwhile 
to suffer all imaginable ills ? 

That is the coloring afforded by your spectacles. He is noth- 
ing of the kind. Your self-idea is all wrong. As a soul you have 
lost your primal innocence and fallen into a knowledge that com- 
pels you to prove its falsity. You have eaten of the tree and you 



OS HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

have to digest its fruit. This is what experience is, the proof that 
the natural self -idea is incorrect. 

Here lies your fate. You must prove that it is not true, for 
you have a glorious destiny to fulfil. The eternal good which 
antedates your self-idea is pushing, pushing, pushing steadily to 
manifestation; and all that you call evil has to get out of the way. 

Work with this good and the victory is yours, for it is stronger 
than evil. Its roots are eternal and the parasite has none. " Over- 
come evil with good." 

If you were as sensitive to good as you are to evil you would 
see as much of it. If you become more sensitive to good than you 
are to evil you will see more good than evil. You can increase 
this sensitiveness to good by getting and holding persistently in- 
thought, the true self -idea. Get it and hold it and you will be- 
come it. And in the process of becoming, evil vanishes even as 
the snow melts and runs silently away under the steady beams of 
the sun. 

What ! No more murders, robberies and crimes if we get 
and hold the true self-idea ? Yes, just that. 

The man who steals is after satisfaction and thinks he will 
get it that way. But he will not and cannot, for because of what 
he is in being, and what he is as a soul, satisfaction through such 
a channel is impossible, and he has got to move on. 

Sometime, through experience, he will find that when he 
sought to rob others he only robbed himself, and there is little 
satisfaction in that. He ignorantly, in his efforts to gratify his 
instinct of appropriation, used his imaging power to picture what 
he wanted and the way to get it; and this in defiance of the moral 
sense which was not so strong as the animal instinct of appro- 
priation. 

He was ruled by this instinct to his own loss, as he is sure to 
sometime find out. His experience, crowded full of evil though 
it may be, is, and will continue to be, a means by which he will 
find out what he has done. So with all its evil it, and all in it, is 
good for him. It is a mirror in which his own nature and possi- 
bilities are revealed unto him when he has his eyes open to see. 

Eemember that the murderer or the thief or the rascal is a 
living soul, and not a material shape. This is only the instrument 
which the soul uses, and very pitiful work it is sometimes re- 
quired to perform. 

However this visible person may appear to you, however 
wicked and altogether vile this man may be, that soul must ascend. 
Ascension is compelled by the nature of its being, and the al- 
mighty resistless primal energy which is the creative power of 
God pushes it along the upward path. 

Whether it continues to use the flesh, or whether with pain 
and bitterness it forsakes it, still its experience continues, for its 



THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 69 

desires remain to it; and still must it learn the mistakes it has 
made and why it has had to bear their consequences. 

" Lord, keep mine eyes from seeing evil." 

When you stop thinking evil it will begin to disappear from 
your own life and from the world. Thought is creative. All evil 
is in thought, nowhere else. It is subjective. Its manifestation 
is the objective you see. 

If it is not subjective with yourself, if you are not thinking 
" What a rascal Mr. So-and-so is ! " you will see no rascal in Mr. 
So-and-so. 

Get the true self -idea for yourself and of necessity you must 
have and hold it for your neighbor also. What is true for you is 
true for him, in that you bear the same relation to God and have 
the same destiny to fulfil. 

While you are fulfilling this destiny — and it is glorious — 
much that enters into your experience, which is your existence, 
seems evil because it is unpleasant and painful. But this very 
feeling is Nature's push to make us move along. 

As souls we cannot stand still, cannot hang back, as our 
mortal or natural sense inclines us to do. We must move. 

Throughout creation the general tendency is upward. But 
gravity has to be overcome, and our mortal sense, natural to the 
Adam-soul, tends to draw it downward. The conflict between 
this gravity and the general impelling tendency is what we feel 
and call pain. 

It is a voice that warns and instructs us if we have ears to 
hear and a heart to understand. " Move on," it says, and con- 
tinued suffering comes from holding back. 

If we hear, understand, and heed, we obey the voice, we 
move on and the suffering abates. Some day we move on beyond 
it, beyond the liability to it. We attain mastery of that nature 
in us that feels the suffering. 

Before we get ready to move on, before we hear and obey, 
we cry aloud that our experience is evil, is full of evil, that evil 
is master and we are slaves. We speak from feeling only, lack- 
ing the understanding that would interpret it. 

" There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, 
and none of them is without signification." 

Get that most desirable thing under the sun, understanding, 
and the evil disappears, the good appears. Then the way to the 
overcoming of all that seems evil is found. 

Evil is overcome with good, when the good is laid hold upon 
and brought to bear upon the evil. Then we obey the eternal 
command and we move on in compliance with the demand of 
our God-being. 

All is good. There is no evil. 



LETTING THE DEAD BUKY ITS DEAD. 

One of the conditions essential to the mastery of all that 
causes suffering is the ability to let go of the past. To " let the 
dead bury its dead " is requisite for continued progress and vic- 
tory. 

You have met with a most trying experience recently — one 
that has wrung your heart and brought conditions which are well- 
nigh unendurable. Your sense of suffering is keen — so severe as 
almost to swallow up every other sense. You forget that you have 
blessings, and you feel only your miseries. 

So you hug your suffering closer to you and keep it warm by 
holding it close, while you fondle it continually, as if it were a 
well-beloved child. You think of nothing else; you talk of noth- 
ing else; it fills your world, covers your whole horizon. 

And in this way you keep your grief alive, giving it more and 
more vitality, that it may sting you again and yet again. And 
perhaps, meanwhile, you are praying God to take it away from 
you, imploring Him to remove it, for you cannot bear it. 

Someone who is sorry for your suffering tries to comfort and 
help you, and attempts to show you that your case is not as hope- 
less as it looks to you; the trial and grief are not so severe as 
that which another, not far away, is undergoing; the blessings 
are many and waiting to be counted. 

And then you resent what this one tries to do for you — 
resent the least little tug at that which you are hugging so closely 
to you; and you say, " She is so unsympathetic ! She cannot see 
how intensely I suffer ! " 

You are the one who cannot see many things. You cannot 
see that if the God you pray to were to answer your prayer and 
take away your grief, He would use human means; and that this 
very friend is an instrument through which that which soothes 
and helps may be working. How do you expect anything of this 
kind can be taken from you if you persistently hold on to it and 
will not let it go ? 

What is grief or sorrow ? A feeling. What is unhappiness ? 
A feeling. What is disappointment, dejection, despondency ? 
A feeling. How can a feeling be taken away from you except as 
it is displaced by another one ? How can it be displaced by an- 



LETTING THE DEAD BURY ITS DEAD. 71 

other unless you will do your part, unless you will permit the cul- 
tivation of another feeling ? 

What do you find in a garden ? Plenty of weeds when there 
is little cultivation; but with persistent cultivation more flowers 
and fewer weeds. What we help to bring forth from it is bettei 
than what it produces of itself. 

Do not be hurt, now, when you are told that persistently 
keeping your misery alive by always thinking about it is a form of 
selfishness. Do not be surprised when you are told that you enjoy, 
yes, enjoy, your grief, even as some people " enjoy poor health." 

Perhaps you feel a little indignant at being told this, but 
that is good for you. Unwittingly you will begin to loosen your 
hold a little; you will not cling so tenaciously. 

Did you ever think, or observe, that nothing is so common as 
unpleasant, even painful, experience, grief, and even despair ? 
These are feelings as old as the human soul; and when you say, 
" Was there ever a sorrow like unto my sorrow ! " many in your 
near neighborhood have experienced its equivalent. 

Look out into the world and see that there are others who 
are bearing burdens every day, far heavier than yours. Look, and 
then try to find out how you can lighten them, and in that effort 
you will have to use your hands, and so you will let go of that 
which you have hugged so close. 

One day you will be surprised to find it gone, and in your soul 
a new, a heavenly guest; a loving tenderness for every soul that 
suffers; a willingness to spend and be spent if you can give them 
any relief. 

How can you begin to get away from suffering ? Ey drop- 
ping the past. By letting go of even yesterday. What have you 
to do with " a day that is done " ? It is behind you, and to-day 
is yours. 

By moaning over the past, by dragging that corpse into the 
present, you are losing glorious possibilities. Your past acts will 
die their own death if you will only let them. They belong to the 
past; the present belongs to you. 

True, they will bear their consequences and you will have 
to meet these, but do you think you are better prepared to meet 
them by groaning, or weeping, or wailing ? 

Whatever prevents us from making the best of ourselves to- 
day is something to be discouraged. Whatever helps us to do and 
be our best to-day is to be encouraged. Is not this common sense ? 

Were you a rascal yesterday ? Then be an honest man 
to-day. There is no other way of atonement. Stop thinking how 
you can gratify your own desires at other people's expense, and 
the rascal begins to die. Think how you can deal justly and hon- 
estly with others, even if you cannot thus have all your wishes 
gratified, and the honest man will begin to' appear. 

Transformation is possible inside of twenty-four hours. It 



72 HOW WE MASTEE OUE FATE. 

is a mountain that is always at hand waiting for us to climb. Any 
day we may become transfigured to ourselves, and then we shall 
become transfigured without, eventually. 

It is all in thought. Never a robbery was committed, a foul 
deed done, but it was performed in thought before a member of 
the body moved to execute the will. 

" Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as 
wool." 

How do we get rid of our sins ? By forsaking them. How 
do we forsake them ? By ceasing to think the thoughts which 
are the sins. The outward acts are only expressions of the 
thoughts. To be clean in thought is to be clean in life, and 
there is no other way. To become clean in thought is to let go 
the past and start anew. 

We are all pilgrim souls, journeying together in a common 
road that leads to a common destination. Eemember, the fleshly 
body is only something we use for a time and drop on the way, 
while we keep right on travelling. No one can afford to say, " I 
am holier than thou." Well for us if we can say, " I have been 
tempted and I have conquered. Let me help you." 

As souls, the full stature is what we must reach. Why, then, 
hold on to the childhood ? Why be so loath to let go its experi- 
ences that look smaller and smaller as we go on, if we will not 
persist in lugging them along with us ? 

Do not hold to the illusion that it is lovely and commendable 
in you to be so devoted to the past. It is nothing of the kind. It 
is like trying to travel with a ball and chain on your ankle. 
Cut loose from it in your thought. Stop revolving round and 
round it as the one centre which draws everything to itself. You 
have a greater orbit to move in. 

Climb that Mountain of Transfiguration which is sure to be 
found sometime in our pathway, and see yourself anew. Then 
think " according to the pattern shown you on the mount." 

In your real being you are the child of the eternal Grod. As 
a soul you have to find your Source. Your past experiences were 
only missing the way. Hard, indeed, they were, for the straight 
line is the only safe path, and to wander out of it is to bruise our- 
selves and become bewildered. But thanks be to God ! not one 
soul shall miss finding its way home. 

Eecreate yourself in thought, and the sinner shall become 
the saint, the wandering soul shall find itself in the Father's house. 
Only when we let go the past, let it go with all that belongs to it, 
girding our loins for the present and all that belongs to it, feeling 
that we are able to meet it, do we know A Happy New Year. 

The first of January may come and go, and come and go 
again, and it is but the Old Year repeating itself till we make 
time new; till we stand over it instead of under it, bound to what 
it holds in the past. 



LETTING THE DEAD BURY ITS DEAD. 73 

The dead will always bury its dead if we let it. To press 
forward to that which is for us, no matter what we have ignorantly 
made for ourselves on the way, is the only hope of victory at last. 
When our thought is liberated from the past and set free to bring 
our destined future into the present, we begin to know " the free- 
dom of the Sons of God." 

Speak no more " I have been vile and wicked/' but " I am 
made whole." Think love, and purity, and goodness, and truth. 
Fill the inner world with these creations, and the outer world will 
be changed, even glorified. 

You cannot lie, you cannot steal, you cannot mourn and 
grieve, you cannot be covetous and selfish if you are at work with 
these thought creations; for then you are reproducing God's 
handiwork and there is no place for unlikeness. Beauty and joy 
and gladness shall dwell with you all day long, and sorrow and 
sighing shall flee away. 

Oh! this is such a beautiful world, and the Good is every- 
where to be seen in it, when we get those blinders, the unhappy 
past, away from our eyes; when we are " new every morning and 
fresh every evening "; when we breathe deep draughts of the 
Breath of Life and say, " Because of what I am, this day is mine, 
and I am no longer the slave of the past. I am king in my 
domain." 

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first 
heaven and earth were passed away." 



WHAT IS WITHIN THE "HEKE." 

" Where shall we be when we go away from here? " 

Again and again you have asked this question of yourself, 
and of others, seeking an answer that satisfies. And again and 
again you have failed to get the desired satisfaction as you pon- 
dered over the replies received. 

For ages human souls have been seeking a " Where? " when 
the search should be for a " Which? " 

But you who have learned to look in the right direction, who 
begin to realize the creative power of thought, can begin to see, 
if you think a moment, that locality is condition; " only that and 
nothing more." What you call " Here " is only a natural, there- 
fore common, condition of soul. 

This great world by which you set such store and which ap- 
pears so huge, is but a small part of the Universe. And the Uni- 
verse is but a series of interrelated conditions or soul-states. 
These states find their unity in being. 

Your being, the unchanging real of you, includes the Uni- 
verse. In it are all the states possible to individual consciousness; 
and you, as a soul, will " go to " every one of them. 

How long you will dwell in any one depends upon your desire 
for, and effort toward, realization of your true being as Lord 
of all. 

" Here," or " in this world," as the natural state of the soul, 
seems all important, and the only life we are sure of, till we begin 
to find another one, not outside but within it. And here is a great 
truth which is a "glad tidings" to those who can receive the 
annunciation. 

All higher worlds, all higher states are within this one. And 
we can go from " this world " to the " next " while we still wear 
this coat of skin which is called the body. 

" What! without dying? " you ask. 

Yes, without laying off that fleshly body — while using it on 
the plane where it belongs. 

Do I mean immortality of the flesh? 

No, I do not. I mean immortality of the soul, which can 
be an immortality in the flesh — within it. 



WHAT IS WITHIN THE " HERE." 75 

Remember our former illustration. The acorn contains a 
whole tree, potentially. Because of its nature, of what is within 
it, what is without is only the coming forth of that which, 
primarily, is within. 

The first shoot from the acorn of being is the Adam-soul; 
and the whole soul is in the acorn. This state or stage of the soul's 
becoming, is what we call " Here " or " living in this world." It 
is but the infancy of self-consciousness. 

To the little shoot, its own maturity lies way before it in a 
misty and unknown future. Even its next stage of growth is un- 
known. What it is to be next year does not appear as it looks 
out and forward. It faces, continually, the unknowable. 

Its natural tendency is to look out, to peer into that which is 
not yet, and to shrink back affrighted because it does not see and 
know. And all the while this little shoot, the Adam-soul, is being 
pushed from the acorn of being. 

If only it can turn and look backward, following its line of 
connection with the being, it will find that all that is to come in 
the other direction, already is in the being. The whole tree is 
there. 

And if it finds — as it can — what is in the acorn, it knows 
what will come before that has appeared as the continuity of the 
shoot. 

Put yourself in the place of this little shoot. As a soul you 
have been put forth from that Lord which includes all that the 
genus — Man — is. All kinds of men, or all species, are in this all 
of being. 

What we may call the physical man, the mental man, the 
moral man, the growing man, are species of this genus. They 
are all involved or potential in it, therefore must be evolved 
from it. 

This evolution of the species from the genus — do not be 
discouraged, and think this is too hard for you to understand, 
for you can understand it — is what we see and trace as develop- 
ment of the soul. 

Hence the necessity of looking to the acorn of being in our 
search for a why and wherefore of existence. If we only look 
there and see what is involved, even as the whole tree is potential 
in the acorn, we shall see that as a soul we have a destiny to 
fulfil. 

We must become all that our God-being involves. 

One by one the species are brought forth or incarnated. 
The physical man appears. The mental man appears. The moral 
man appears. The spiritual man will appear. The divine man 
will appear. 

Just as the first shoot becomes a stronger stem, and the stem 
becomes a trunk, and the trunk puts forth branches, and the 
branches put forth twigs, leaves, and fruit, so the Adam-soul 



76 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

grows into the next higher state, and it into the next and so on 
till the divine man appears or is incarnated. 

Where will yon be when yon die? Just where yon are, or 
what you are when you die; or when you drop this fleshly instru- 
ment you are now using. 

For there is no death in the sense of an end to soul. It is 
immortal by nature, not by Almighty favor; and because it is 
rooted in the eternal being. Its only death is the disappearance 
of the first shoot into the stronger stem. So if you dropped your 
coat of skin in the next hour, your locality would be your condi- 
tion or soul-quality. 

Though this objective world which we look upon is compara- 
tively — not absolutely — real, and has a basis in the being, its 
substantiality and conditions are all made by soul — by our self- 
consciousness. Their perpetuity also depends upon our self-con- 
sciousness, not upon our coat of skin. 

Objects are to us as we sense them. And if ours is only the 
Adam or natural sense, this must still remain to us, in the main, 
when we drop our fleshly instrument. It will be modified but 
not radically changed; modified, because this instrument is now a 
window we look through, while then we have turned from the 
window and are looking at the room in which we have been all 
the while. 

Settle this one fact with yourself if you wish to be rid of 
uncertainty, of all fear and wonderment as to what will become of 
you when you die. 

You are that you are. 

Now, you are a soul that must grow; grow to a divine stature 
eventually, however long — as our human sense reckons time — 
you may prolong, through ignorance or intention, any one soul- 
state or condition. 

You are impelled by your own God-like being, and move 
forward you must till you stand forth crowned with that God- 
Likeness. Divinity belongs to your being, and because it is there 
primarily, it must appear eventually. 

With this future before you as a soul; with that everlasting 
present which is your real being that never leaves or forsakes you; 
with your ignorant past dead, and left to bury its own dead if 
you have awakened to this omnipresence, how can you feel fear as 
to what will confront you " on the other side " ? 

How can you feel uncertainty as to whether there is a here- 
after or not? 

How can there be any doubt in the matter? 

Do you not see that this very hour you are making the quality 
of your future ? 

Not making the future for that is a logical consequence of 
what you are. But making that quality for it which will be your 
locality after death because it will be your soul-condition. 



WHAT IS WITHIN THE "HERE." 77 

How are you thinking? Thought is creative. By your use 
of thought-force you are now creating your future hell or heaven, 
and you will experience just what you make for yourself. 

" But," you ask, " shall I see and know my loved ones? " 

Do you see them and know them now? 

" 0! yes! " you say. 

Stop a moment. There is your brother with whom you have 
lived from childhood, whom you have seen every day. Last week 
he did something which was an overwhelming shock and surprise 
to you. '" I never would have believed it of him," you said, " if I 
had not seen and known it myself. No one could have made me 
believe it." 

How much did you know him, though you had seen him 
every day for years? You know him only as that soul reveals its 
status to you, though you look upon its coat of skin every day. 

When you ask that question you are thinking only of that 
coat with its features, the hair and eyes you know so well. You 
are thinking of the instrument, more than of that which uses the 
instrument, are you not? 

But now, while you are using your, own, does not a subtle 
sense — never mind naming it — sometimes penetrate beyond the 
physical and give you an equally subtle knowledge of the quality 
of a soul whose physical instrument enters your presence for 
perhaps the first time? 

There are more ways of knowing than through what we have 
called our five physical senses. There is the way by which we 
are known, by those who are not dependent upon the coat as the 
instrument necessary to that end. 

Eemember Paul's utterance. " Henceforth know I no man 
after the flesh." Begin now to sense — to know souls and let go 
that strong hold upon flesh. Use it always according to the pur- 
pose in which it has place; but try, 0! try not to cling to it. 

And of this be sure. Not one truly loving feeling can ever be 
lost or wasted. Every single unselfish heart-throb you have ever 
experienced for another vibrates throughout eternity. Those 
whom you truly, not selfishly, love are your own, and where you 
are they will be also when their love is the same. 

Let go all fear and doubt. Dry your eye that you may see 
more clearly. G-ood is Omnipotent. Eest in the Infinite arms 
while you live in the eternal present. 

It is the Law that as a soul you must fulfil your destiny; and 
" not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law till all be fulfilled." 
But love is the fulfilling of the Law. And with real love comes 
surety and peace. You know your end. 

" This is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all 
which he hath given me I should lose nothing." 



THE HIDDEN BODY. 

"How are the dead raised, and with what body do they 

come ? " 

How many are puzzled by this question which frequently 
presents itself to you, does it not? 

" If I am a living soul now, and using this physical shape, 
only temporarily, what will my body be when I have dropped this 
instrument?" 

This question can be answered only from the understanding 
of what Body is, abstractly, or in itself. If you will try to see, 
first, the nature and office of Body, we will endeavor to gain some 
perception of what your body will be after what is called death. 

We must dismiss our early belief that when we drop this 
physical body we now see, leaving it behind as we pass through 
the portal that leads to the beyond, we shall find another body 
ready and waiting to be picked up and put on, as we would put on 
another ready-made coat or dress. 

This view makes Body something extraneous to and separate 
from ourselves, and is altogether wrong. If bodies are waiting at 
the other side of that portal, which we pass through, remember, 
it seems probable that there might be something of a scramble 
to select and appropriate the best one. Or, if they are apportioned 
by some guardian, he would easily be accused of partiality if he 
gave a better one to another than he did to ourselves. 

If all is Law and there is no Chance, even this after-death 
body will be what it must, not what it happens to be. This point 
we can settle first. 

Now let us remember what the Science of Being teaches us 
about our nature, about the being and the soul. Our being is 
that identity which is eternal, incapable of change. Our soul is 
that which is not only capable of change, but it is that which must 
change in quality, becoming more and better. Our shape, or the 
person, is only the limitation of body — " thus far and no farther." 

Because the soul is rooted in the being, but is immediately 
connected with the shape, Personality includes soul and shape, 
but not the being. It is related to the being, but does not in- 
elude it. 

Soul, as Self-consciousness, is embodied or incarnated; and 
the embodiment must be according to the shape or outline. What 
is contained within the outline is the Body. 

The surface of this Body is all we now see with our present 



THE HIDDEN BODY. 79 

sense of sight; and it is this mere surface that we call our body — 
the body we have now. This thing of flesh, blood, nerve, bone, 
and muscle, which, because it is all we now see we call our body, 
is really only the " coat of skin " that clothes our body — a body 
we do not see as we look at the coat of skin. 

This hidden or veiled body is more truly our body now, than is 
its garment by which we set such store. And this is the body we 
will have after death; for death is only casting off the garment 
which now clothes it. We drop the coat of skin and stand forth 
with unveiled or unclothed body. 

Hence after death we have the very same body that we had 
before death; the difference being that whereas it was hidden 
from our sight before death by the fleshly garment that clothed 
it, now it is unclothed. 

So we see that so far from looking for and picking up and 
putting on another body on the other side of the portal, we carry 
the body we have now, through the portal; but we do not carry 
the coat of skin along with it. This is " the remains," and it is 
rightly named. It belongs to this material plane and it remains 
there. It will disintegrate, fall from shape into shapelessness, 
dust returning to dust. 

But the body which is carried through the portal will have 
the same shape or outline. 

You are a housekeeper and you have often made jelly which 
you have poured into a mould. The mould was the coat which had 
shape, and the jelly in it, the body. When you removed the jelly 
from the mould it retained the shape but was separated from the 
mould. So the body which survives death retains the personal 
shape though it is separated from that mould which we call our 
physical body. 

You will see that it is all important that we do what we can 
to make our hidden body of as good a quality as possible; and this 
we accomplish by taking thought for that which is more than the 
body. Because body is the soul's embodiment, it must be, in 
quality, just what the soul is. According to the grade or quality 
of our self-consciousness, must be the grade or quality of our veiled 
body. 

And the quality of the soul is determined by its dominant 
thought. 

And the dominant thought is the one that is in accord with 
the mental pattern. 

And the mental pattern is determined either by mortal sense, 
or spiritual understanding. 

So as we analyze we find that we are the makers of the quality 
of our bodies, and that we have much to do with what they are 
on the other side of the portal, because, there, the body we are 
making now, through thought-creation, is Unveiled. 

After the jelly is turned from the mould, the mould may be 



80 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

utterly destroyed without affecting in the least its former contents. 
So our after-death body remains intact, though its coat of skin 
decomposes; and its perpetuity depends upon its quality. 

Are we helping, now, to build the spiritual body, or are we 
making a mortal quality of body? 

You have been accustomed to think, perhaps, that the after- 
death body was the spiritual body because it was the after-death 
body; but this is not so. Neither is this body furnished ready- 
made. Try to see that existence from beginning to end is only a 
process of unveiling; that you, in your real being, were before it 
and will be after it; that you are only getting acquainted with 
yourself. 

To sum it all up, this is what existence is; and when you are 
completely acquainted with yourself, when there is no more of 
your own nature for you to find out, circumscribed existence will 
end for you, and infinity will begin. 

Dismiss the idea that because something is invisible to your 
present sight it is spiritual in quality. Invisibility does not con- 
stitute spirituality. Mortality has its invisible as well as visible 
planes. The inner world which you, as a soul, live in — you only 
look out upon this external world, you know — has much to do 
with the quality of your after-death body; for it is made of the 
material of that world, even as the coat of skin is made of, or in- 
carnates, this dust. 

What is your inner world? One of light or one of darkness? 
Is your veiled body luminous or dark? Is it luminous with the 
consciousness of your God-being — "the light that was never on 
sea or land " — or dark with the error- thoughts which possess it? 

You impart quality to it by the thoughts you think, and it 
will never be the spiritual body — you will never have the spiritual 
body, till body gains this quality from you. 

" If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light." 

What is your mental pattern according to which you think? 
If it is — " I am of the dust, and I shall go back to it again. A few 
years ago I began to be, and a few years from now I shall cease to 
be. Meanwhile I am doomed to all forms of suffering and dis- 
aster," your veiled body cannot be full of the light of true knowl- 
edge or wisdom. Instead, it will be dark with the error knowl- 
edge; for you have incarnated, or embodied, error instead of truth. 
Then you cannot have the spiritual body. The error-element pre- 
vents it. 

We are all sons of the Carpenter. We are builders. We work 
as such, doing our part even while we are also being built up and 
into " His glorious body." 

The Primal Energy of the Universe builds Body, and accord- 
ing to fundamental Shape; but we build the qualified body, 
through our own thoughts. 

So we cannot afford to continue that mortal quality which 



THE HIDDEN B0D5T. 81 

has come from our former ignorant thinking. It shuts the soul 
out from its " kingdom of heaven." It is a quality that is foreign 
to heaven, or harmony with true being, and so it cannot enter 
there. If we are shut out from heaven it is because we have igno- 
rantly shut ourselves out. The way to heaven is within us, and 
the entrance is right thoughts. 

Our inner darkness must be dispelled by them before our 
mortal body can be glorified; before it can become luminous be- 
cause it embodies wisdom; before it can be Truth incarnated. 
Our mental pattern must be according to our true being; and it is 
revealed to us through spiritual insight, not through mortal sense. 
Our thoughts must be in conformity to it, for the building of the 
spiritual quality of body. 

" Because I am the expression of my Cause, I am a spiritual, 
not a material, being. I am eternal, not temporal, for my Cause 
sustains me and I cannot die. In my being I am whole and com- 
plete, I am ' very good.' In it there is no lack. Because of what 
I am in being, my work is to bring forth its fruit. All power is 
there, but I am to make it manifest. And now, because the eye 
of the soul is fixed upon this God-derived being, I am building my 
body according to it. In my flesh I shall see God." 

Let this idea be the pivotal point around which your 
thoughts revolve; and gradually, not suddenly, your veiled body, 
that you will have after death, will lose its dark or mortal quality, 
and take on the luminous or spiritual quality. It will shine with 
the inner light, and its radiance will pierce the outer wall, the 
coat of skin, and its glory will appear, even to eyes that wonder 
and understand it not. 

When Moses came down from the Mount after communing 
with God, the " skin of his face " shone so that those about him 
were not able to bear it. 

! how true it is that " the light shineth in the darkness and 
the darkness comprehendeth it not." But you can, you do, begin 
to comprehend, and to realize your own power of co-operation 
with the Eternal. " Bring forth " is the command that is never 
silent. " Bring forth your best and subdue your least " rings al- 
ways in the ears of the awakened soul. And this we accomplish 
by our use of Thought-Force according to the eternal pattern. 

Have no fear. Take care of the now, and the future is al- 
ready cared for. Where you are after death, depends upon what 
you are, as a soul, before death. .Your locality is your condition. 
Your body will be the embodiment of your condition, and this you 
have now. Its quality is your quality. The quality is the state or 
locality. 

" Where I am, there ye may be also." 



THE WAY TO HAPPINESS. 

" Oh! if I only had your opportunities! " 

That is what you said yesterday to your friend whose pos- 
sessions and environment are unlike your own and are what you 
desire. She is placed so diiferently from yourself! She can do so 
much that is impossible for you! And she does not seem to value 
her possibilities as you would were they yours. 

With what a deep sigh did you think, " How strangely things 
are ordered in this world! " and there was the half -acknowledged 
thought that you could order them a great deal better if you could 
have your way. 

True enough. To one who has no insight into " the deep 
things of God" they seem very strangely ordered. Here is a 
woman who has money, social position, a beautiful home, and 
yet is not happy. Here is a man who has gained the worldly suc- 
cess he started early in life to win. His name is a power in the 
business and financial world, and as he plans many execute. Yet 
he is not happy. 

Here and there, all around you, you can put your finger on 
men and women who, with every facility for happiness, still lack 
it; whose faces are written over with that handwriting which is 
Nature's protest and revelation. When you look in their eyes 
you see haunting shadows, not the clear light which betokens an 
inward steadily shining sun. 

Why is this so? you ask. Why, when happiness is so in- 
stinctively desired, so universally sought, is it so seldom found? 
And here we have a world-old riddle, new to each generation of 
mankind. 

You want to be happy. You feel that you have a right to 
happiness. You are also, perhaps, somewhat acquainted with 
the teachings of the Science of Being which shows you that all 
good things are yours; and you say, " I see, as well as feel, that 
I am entitled to happiness, and I do not understand why it con- 
tinually eludes me; why I am denied what others have in plenty 
— the things and conditions that would make me so happy." 

Eight here lies the solution of the puzzle. It is the continu- 
ance, in spite of any new knowledge you may have acquired, of the 



THE WAY TO HAPPINESS. 83 

belief that externals can give yon happiness. It is not because 
of their nature, but because of what they are to you, that their 
possession, or lack of it, makes you happy or miserable. 

As long as you look to the without for happiness you will 
look in vain. The most you will get is a transient enjoyment. 
You have a perfect right to enjoy all external things, all that per- 
tains to the state of sense-consciousness; but it is unwise to let 
them possess you, and if you are dependent upon them for your 
happiness, they will possess you. 

Here again is the ever-recurring question — mastery or sub- 
jection? Desire for happiness is instinctive. It is because of the 
nature and destiny of the soul. The soul is heir of eternal life, 
and the impulse or trend is along the upward way. More and 
better than we are, more and better than we have, is the desire of 
the soul, native to it because of its heavenly origin. 

Attachment causes much of its unhappiness — lack of hap- 
piness. Attachment will rid it of unhappiness and give it blessed- 
ness. " First, the natural, and afterward the spiritual." 

Attachment to externals never brings more than enjoyment, 
yet this attachment is natural to the soul, and when it is the only 
attachment the soul is bound by it to them, subject to suffering 
and sorrow when deprived of them. 

Wealth sufficient to gratify every desire, position and influ- 
ence that confer worldly power, are good things to possess, and 
bad things to possess you; hence as a soul with a destiny that lies 
away beyond them to fulfil, you cannot dwell for always on the 
plane where they belong. You have either to let go, or be torn 
away from them, for the Great First Cause is pushing you along, 
whether you will or no. 

This loosening of your natural attachment hurts, hurts 
dreadfully because of what those things are to you. You have 
ignorantly fastened yourself to them, and you have to be taken 
from them because your course is upward, and run it you must. 

You are deceiving yourself with the belief that you will be 
happy only as they are left to you; which means, really, only as 
you are left with them. 

You will never find more than enjoyment till you begin to 
form the other attachment, a liking for spiritual realities, for you 
can have true happiness only as you find your level. And as a 
living soul you are not part and parcel of externals, therefore you 
cannot remain with them however strong your attachment for 
them may be. 

But neither do you have to tear yourself away from them. 
This is not necessary. You have only to discern that which is 
eternal instead of temporal, desire it with all your heart, loosen 
your clutch of desire for the natural as the all important, and 
through the new attachment you will be Weaned, drawn gently 



84 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

and quietly in the other direction till the externals cease to pos- 
sess you, though you do not cease to possess or use them. 

Happiness lies between enjoyment and blessedness. Enjoy- 
ment belongs to the brute as well as to ourselves, happiness to 
the human soul, and blessedness to the spiritualized soul. 

Happiness is never given, there is nothing in or of the world 
that can give it. It is obtained. The brute cannot obtain it, we 
can; but w^e never get it from externals. 

Analyze your consciousness carefully and you will find that 
your thought-pictures constitute your happiness, rather than the 
things you think about. 

It is your thought-picture of what you would have and do 
if you had your friend's opportunities and possessions, that con- 
stitutes the happiness you seek. 

When you are having "a real good time" you have only 
enjoyment, and this is more or less unthinking. It is sensation 
on a lower plane. But you can, by taking thought, create hap- 
piness. 

Begin by trying to see that because there is no chance in the 
universe, you do not " happen " to be placed in the circumstance 
and environment in which you are to-day, without this and that, 
without many things which you desire. 

All is law, and, as a soul, you are under the law, will remain 
under it till you free yourself. 

In being, you are the child of God. In soul, you are first 
the servant and then the Son. 

In your being dwells the power of dominion. But this power 
has to be exercised by the soul before it can be established; before 
it is on earth as it is in heaven. 

Are you exercising this power when you say, " ! if I only 
had your opportunities! "? 

You have your own opportunities, and they are far better 
ones for you than his would be. The fact that they are your own 
is proof that they are what you need to help you to do what you 
need to do. They are your friends and you are looking over their 
heads in your ignorant desire for others which you have not. 

How is dominion shown? By getting for yourself what some 
one else has? Or by proving yourself able to do without it? 

Think a little before you answer this question about what 
dominion is. For too many it is seen as the power to command 
what one wants on the sense-plane of consciousness; all one wants 
of the things which belong to it. 

And this power is mistaken for spiritual might, when it is 
nothing of the kind. Indeed, it and its manifest results are 
sometimes an indication of lack of spiritual might, of a certain 
weakness rather than strength of soul. 

If you cannot see and hold yourself superior to circum- 
stances, whatever they may be, never granting them, in thought, 



THE WAY TO HAPPINESS. 85 

dominion over you, you are still servant, not yet adopted as 
Son. 

If you vail, "0! I cannot become what you are because of 
my environment," you are bound to serve under the law. " As a 
man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

Real dominion does not mean power to change circumstances 
and environment at once to what your sense-nature desires. Real 
dominion is spiritual might; and it is the power to make those 
very conditions serve you instead of rule you, bringing about a 
change in them through the change in yourself. 

From the within to the without, rather than from the without 
to the within, is the higher order that some time the soul must 
follow. Only in this order is it Son instead of servant. 

This very circumstance or condition which is right at hand \ 
now is a messenger with a message for you. In it you are enter- 
taining an angel unawares. When you take toward it the attitude I 
of Son it will yield its message to you. 

" What will you with me ? I and my Father are one. You 
can have no terrors for me. Through the Father I am sufficient 
for you, for I am about His business, not my own." 

Try always to hold this attitude toward all experiences, pres- 
ent and prospective, and even " the wrath of man shall be made 
to praise Him." 

A magnetic attraction for the things of the sense-plane is 
not that dominion over all things which is spiritual might; for 
it is a temporal dominion over some things. 

You can want these lesser things so intensely as to make\ 
yourself a magnet to draw them to you. But better than this, ' 
you can want the spiritual realities so intensely as to draw them ' 
to you, and through your union with them all lesser things will 
fall in line, or come to you, not as an unnecessary accumulation 
of possessions, but as you have need of them. 

In this position, from this altitude, you will always be able 
to command them, not by what you intentionally do to that end, 
but by what you have become. 

Then you will find more than enjoyment, you will have hap- 
piness, and find yourself on the way to blessedness. Your wean- 
ing will be effectual and sure. 

As the beloved Son you will exercise your birthright, the 
dominion that belongs to the Father. You will be Master of your 
own circumstances and conditions, knowing these are the best 
for you. 



THE VOICE THAT IS HEAED IN LONELINESS. 

" Oh, I feel so utterly alone ! " 

Has this been the cry of yonr heart ? 

Have you felt, while in the midst of your family and friends, 
that, dear as they were to you, there was an inner self that was 
solitary, even desolate at times ? 

Have you eaten at the same table, sat closely side by side, 
shared the same room, been intimately associated with others 
every waking hour, and yet felt at times utter loneliness ? 

You hesitate to answer, perhaps, because of a sense of 
loyalty to others ; but deep down in your heart an assent springs 
up which you do not frame with your lips. 

Your loyalty is commendable. Your sense of justice de- 
mands it of you. Your children, your parents, and brothers and 
sisters, love you dearly, do all they can for you, and you must 
be loyal to them — you are glad to be loyal to them. 

And what more can you really ask ? you think. You ought 
to be satisfied, you try to be satisfied, and yet way down within 
there is that little something ; an unrest, a reaching, vague and 
blind, a longing for you know not what. 

With all your loyalty, something speaks here and in spite 
of your protest, of your assurance that everything is all right 
and you are foolish and wicked to feel any lack, any solitari- 
ness. 

We are never so much alone as when with those who are 
dear to us and they fail to understand us. And this failure is 
one of the necessities of Nature, beneficent though momentarily 
painful. There is compensation if only we know where to look 
for it. 

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the 
Lord will take me up." in. mi 

As children our parents and home are the all to us. They 
constitute our world, we scarcely know another. As we grow 
older our world is enlarged. New attractions offer themselves, 
other interests enter in. While parents and home are still dear, 
they are not all. 

We plunge into that world outside the home and find new 
delights. We meet some one hitherto unknown, and love that 
one even more than we have loved home, parents and friends. # 

We leave them, we make another home and find and live in 
another new world. Into this world come some day our own 
little ones, and it expands to hold new joys, hopes and fears. 



THE VOICE THAT IS HEAED IN LONELINESS. 87 

What a change from our childhood world ! We have 
changed its relations. We are now the parents, there are other 
children. The children that we were have forsaken the par- 
ents that were ; not in the sense of forgetting obligations if onr 
parents still wear the flesh, but in the sense of having outgrown 
them according to Nature's demands. 

Are we still to move on ? Still to enlarge our world, or 
find a new one ? Must we push on still further ? Is there no 
stopping place ? 

No, none. Nature's mandate is imperative. " Move 
on." 

Our children grow up. In their turn they grow away by 
growing up. Will all our clinging keep them back ? We face 
the fact, Nature's stern resolve that we are and shall remain in- 
dividuals, however much we blindly try to infuse our lives into 
others or absorb other lives into our own. 

Move on we must. We are to be taken up. We grow up 
to where we can be taken up ; and we are taken up only when 
we are forsaken. 

Does this seem hard and cruel ? Ah, no ! God is Love, 
and there is no cruelty in the operation Of divine Law when it 
is understood. 

The ties of flesh, sweet and beautiful as they are, are tem- 
poral. The bond of the Spirit is eternal. As souls it is our 
destiny to reach and know and prove our God-Likeness. Halt 
as we may on the way, in our journey through the wilderness, 
eventually we must take possession of this promised land. 

With our human sense and desire we cling to our fleshly re- 
lations. To be forsaken of them is a preparation for being 
taken up by the Lord. 

Nature compels this forsaking, helping us to fulfil our des- 
tiny. Foreshadowings of this necessity are ours while in the 
midst of those who are so much to us. That inner loneliness 
that is sometime sure to be felt by every soul, is a prophet of 
the Lord. It foretells that which shall be. 

Every earthly tie and prop shall forsake us that we may 
find and know our Lord, our real being, and His Christ. And 
this does not mean that we shall disregard our family ties 
and obligations. It means that we shall cease to depend so 
wholly upon them, while we continue to meet what thev require 
of us. ^ 

If they constitute our happiness, make up our blessedness, 
how can we desire or look for another ? The trend of Nature 
carries them away from us, leaving us to that actual loneliness, 
ioresnadowed sometimes, which turns us to the Lord for consola- 
tion, for refuge. And when the Lord has taken us up, how 
great the consolation ! 

"In the world, but not of it." 

This weaning from the ties of the flesh but strengthens the 
bond of the Spirit ; and as it is strengthened we love our dear 



88 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

ones more, rather than less. We love them better than we did 
before, because our dependence is upon the higher rather than 
upon the lesser. 

This higher quality of love is the feminine, the mother 
quality. This alone is free from the element of selfishness. 
The lesser loves forsake us and we — if we do not understand — 
sit in the ashes of our desolation thinking there is no consola- 
tion. 

But this is the Lord's opportunity. He cannot take up the 
satisfied. For them there is no attraction in His direction. 
Only those who turn to the Lord can be taken up by the 
Lord. Those who are forsaken will turn His way. To possess 
and not be possessed, to use and not be used, is the way of mas- 
tery. 

Do you say " Oh ! I could not bear it if my child should 
cease to care more for me than for any one in the world ! " 

Dear as your child is to you, there is a corner of your 
heart which that child never enters. If your child possessed 
your whole heart, you would not be you. You are an individ- 
ual, even though for a time you lose your sense of individuality 
in your love for your child or your friend. 

And some time this covered corner opens and the light 
shines in ; and the slumberer there awakens and claims his own. 
Not even the bone of your bone and the flesh of your flesh can 
satisfy him, for he is not of the flesh. He has waited long 
and patiently, biding his time, which comes when you see the 
nature of the fleshly ties and the inevitable destiny that awaits 
you. 

You cannot linger forever, you must go on. As the indi- 
vidual you go on, taken up by the Lord, while you still dwell 
with your family, your friends, meeting your duties which are 
your pleasures, even your joys ; for all is met " in the strength 
of the Lord." 

A life within a life belongs to the individual, a life which 
goes up, not down ; a life which is an ascent of Calvary, per- 
haps, but which leads into the eternal kingdom of righteousness. 

" Be of good cheer : I have overcome the world." 

To overcome the world does not mean to lose all love for 
those connected with us on the plane of the flesh. It means to 
change that love, to eradicate from it the selfish element; to 
love wisely instead of passionately ; to take up our love to a 
higher plane or quality as we are taken up by the Lord. 

The dear according to the fleshly tie, may fail us sometime, 
will fail to be all-sufficient for always, because of the trend of 
nature. The Lord will never fail nor forsake us. 

And experience but brings us to this recognition. It brings 
us to see that the truth of individuality compels a consciousness 
of it that must rise eventually to the level of its source. Our 
own individual being takes us, as souls, up away from the per- 
sonal sense as the all of existence, and compels us to recog- 



THE VOICE THAT IS HEAKD IN LONELINESS. 89 

nize a larger world, a broader relationship than this sense reveals 
to ns. 

Do not say that yon conld not live withont your loved one. 
Yon can, for only by losing him will yon really find him. He is 
an individual also ; and within him is the same covered corner 
which you can never enter and fill. The necessities of being will 
compel him to find that which he must have, and he will not 
find it in you. 

He, too, will be forsaken of even father and mother and be 
taken up by the Lord. And as you are both taken up you will be 
nearer together, be more to each other, than before. 

Do not feel that you are hopelessly unappreciated and mis- 
understood. Do not be appalled at the feeling of utter loneli- 
ness that comes over you at times, as a wave rolling even over 
your head. 

When space is vacant, and sound is stilled, and you are 
alone, so alone that your heart-beat is all you hear, a voice 
will begin to be heard, saying, "When thy father and thy 
mother forsake thee, I will take thee up." 

This voice can be heard only in the silence of loneliness ; 
and perhaps at first you will not understand the language it 
speaks. But you will learn to understand, and a great comfort 
and peace will come to you. 

You will cease to fail to be understood. There is one that 
understands. You will cease to be alone. There is one who is 
always with you. You will cease to fear to be forsaken. You 
will know the Comforter. 

God's law of cause and effect is inflexible, but with it 
comes consolation. The soul loses to find, and farther along it 
has compensation for all losses. 

You can live your life in the midst of misunderstanding 
and misjudgment, even of condemnation. You have that inner 
within the outer life wherein you can — and will— find your com- 
pensation and consolation. 

You are a living soul on your way to the Father's house. 
You are a growing plant, and in this inner life you will blossom 
and shed a fragrance that will sometime dissipate all the misun- 
derstanding which is only the breath of a day. 

To be taken up by the Lord is worth all the forsaking that 
prepares the way. It will make you more than a father, more 
than a mother, more than brother, sister or child ; it will make 
you all these in one, for the Lord will become to you all these 
and more. 

And to you the riddle of Samson shall be made plain. ' ' Out 
of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth 
sweetness." 



. THE LANGUAGE OF SUGGESTION. 

Everything we see has a language. 

" There are, it may.be, so many kinds of voices in the world, 
and none of them is without signification." 

We have many voices in ourselves. Each impulse, sense, and 
faculty, each nature in our composite being, has its voice. And 
everything which belongs to Nature has its voice, not audible like 
our own, and yet a voice that speaks to us in its own language. 

The language of Nature is suggestion. We hear its voice, 
its mute speech, and are misled by it, not, at first, understanding 
its language. But when we come to understand it we are no 
longer misled, we are helped by it. We become able to see the 
grand unity in Nature, our ordained relation to it, and that ulti- 
mate result which is her and our crowning glory. 

Experiments with suggestion, with hypnotic phenomena, 
have proved that most people are susceptible to what is called a 
hypnotic influence. Experiment has passed the stage of ridicule 
and reached the stage of examination. For some, its results are 
indicative of a field of research which may or may not yield re- 
sults worth the effort to obtain them. For others they indicate a 
truth back of a vast array of facts, which holds the facts together, 
and incites a desire to find and know that truth. 

Let us agree that this truth is worth finding and possessing, 
and then make effort together to that end. 

What are you? 

According to the mute language of natural suggestion, you 
are that flesh and blood thing which you see. 

According to this language the figure is the number to the 
hoi/ who is beginning to know, and who, some day, consequently, 
will know all. It speaks to him with its own voice, as that which 
is visible to, and which makes an impression upon him. 

Hearing this mute assertion, receiving from the plane of ob- 
ject this sense-impression, you in your turn suggest — " This is 
I." Your own natural suggestion has met and blended with Nat- 
ure's mute suggestion and, practically — for it is so to you — the 
visible personal shape is you, yourself. 

This natural suggestion of yours is unconscious, but it brings 
cod sequences, for the law of cause and effect constantly operates 
whether we are ignorant or wise. This sense-conclusion, this 
thought of yours, which is your suggestion responsive to the Nat- 



THE LANGUAGE OF SUGGESTION. 91 

ure-suggestion, is builded as the body, and for which Nature 
furnishes the pattern or Shape. 

And to you, the body is you, yourself, and will remain you as 
long as your own assent is given to this suggestion. Practically 
you are this body, living, enjoying and suffering in it, unable to 
see or feel that there is anything but it. 

This suggestion of your own in answer to suggestion from 
objects is involuntary or natural. It is but response to the mute 
suggestion of Nature; for you stand before her great black-board 
as the beginner in self-knowledge, and how can the beginner 
know the whole? 

Because it is involuntary or natural, in one sense you are not 
responsible for its consequences. Yet in another sense, you are 
responsible, for if suggestion from within did not meet sugges- 
tion from without there would be no consequences. You are not 
to blame in the ethical sense, for you have yielded unconsciously 
to the spell of Nature; but there could be no spell nor its conse- 
quences had you not yielded. 

Unconsciously you are self -hypnotized and are susceptible to 
still more suggestion while the spell lasts. Because you are " cast 
into a deep sleep " (Adam), because you are not awake to your 
own real being and its powers, you believe that other objects can 
harm you. The workings of Nature appear in dreadful guise, ad- 
ding their suggestion, which meets response in you, to the igno- 
rantly self -induced state which you call your mixed miserable and 
happy existence. 

This hypnotic state is universal. We dream and suffer and 
enjoy alike. We are not awake to those grand realities that lie 
outside of this state. We are all fast asleep till, some time, a voice 
that penetrates this sleep rings in our ears calling " Awake thou 
that sleepest! " 

In this naturally ignorant self-induced state — mortal-sense 
consciousness — by means of our experiences in it, another kind of 
self-consciousness is slowly growing. It is obscure, hidden, we do 
not realize it at first. We are living only in the outer, hardly con- 
ceiving that there is an inner life, an inner breathing of the soul. 

But it goes on till this other soul, growing within the outer 
existence, is grown enough to add its voice to the rest; and some 
day we are startled at its call. Then has come the time when a 
great possibility is before us, the possibility of coming out of this 
hypnotic state and so out of its pain and suffering. 

For then we become able to conceive another state, the state 
of freedom from these conditions; and within us is the power to 
help ourselves oy voluntary suggestion. 

Here is the parting of the ways, one that leads down to death 
and destruction, and one that leads up to life eternal and joy un- 
speakable. 

"Voluntary suggestion is the great power awaiting our com- 



92 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

mand, a power which, used according to a higher than the natural 
ideal, will bring us to that ideal as our state of consciousness. 
This is use instead of being used, the difference between a servant 
and a master. 

God and Nature furnish us the means for mastery of Nature, 
but we have to find out how to use the means; and we gain this 
knowledge by finding out how not to use them; and we make 
this discovery through the consequence of our involuntary and 
ignorant yielding to the mute suggestion of objects — to sense-im- 
pression. 

The action and reaction weave a spell, the soul is spellbound 
for a season, and only through experience does it first desire and 
then make effort to awake from the spell. 

Have you learned this great truth from your study of the 
principles of the Science of Being, even if you have not yet 
learned it from existence itself? 

Then put your knowledge into practice and use voluntary 
suggestion according to that real being which is yours now, even 
though jou are not conscious of it. 

Truth always waits for manifestation, but it will never be 
manifest till you suggest it to yourself. 

How did you learn when you went to school? How did you 
get possession of the truth of mathematics? That truth was, is 
now, and ever will be; but how did it become your truth? 

You said — you voluntarily suggested to yourself, again and 
again, " five times five are twenty-five; " and if you had not done 
this would you have become a mathematician? Was there any 
other way by which you could know and prove that waiting truth, 
but by speaking your word, first making your word the word? 

Why not try that way now, if you wish to be rid of the night- 
mares that belong to the spell? No matter what your sense-im- 
pression, your feeling, you can say what you will. You can say 
you are free from suffering and are every whit whole, if you 
choose. You can voluntarily suggest this truth — for it is true of 
your being — to yourself, saying it again and again as you did your 
multiplication table. 

Will this do any good? Well, you try it persistently for 
three months and see. Whatever your feeling, if it is discordant, 
unpleasant, painful, affirm — voluntarily suggest the opposite con- 
dition; and you are entering upon the way which eventually will 
make you the master of sense-impressions. 

The strongest suggestion rules, and this affirmation is sup- 
ported by truth itself for it is the word of truth. It is stronger 
than the word of sense-impression. This is the present seeming; 
the other is the eternal reality. 

Try to see what a power and opportunity are yours, and set 
yourself to the doing of this work, the work of co-operation with 
the Great Design. Your use of voluntary suggestion will trans- 



THE LANGUAGE QF SUGGESTION. 93 

form you into that which you declare; change you, the sense- 
soul, into that realization of God-being which is the divine soul, 
and crown of Creation. 

Here is where free will belongs. We are free to use or to be 
used. We are used by natural and involuntary suggestion for a 
time; but in that time there grows gradually in us the discern- 
ment that we must be more than flesh and blood; and as another 
self-idea, or ideal, dawns upon us, at once we become capable of 
choice, for now there are two self -ideas to choose between. When 
we become capable of choice, the rest lies with ourselves. 

Remember that we are talking of the soul, not the being 
which is already complete. The soul grows, and from germ to 
maturity. Its growth to maturity depends upon voluntary sug- 
gestion of its true being. This is why we should see to it that we 
govern our thoughts, for every thought is a suggestion to our own 
soul. We perpetuate the Nature-spell, or we help to break it and 
cause it to vanish, by bringing the soul out of the natural into the 
spiritual. 

As the soul awakens out of this deep sleep, as it is trans- 
formed, all seen as objective is transformed also. Not so much 
evil is seen because there is not so much to be seen. Objective 
nature is only a mirror in which is reflected the Soul. Its passive 
suggestion must be met with positive suggestion and the scenes 
in the mirror will change. 

The Mount of Transfiguration is at hand for us, we can find 
and ascend it through voluntary use of Thought-Force. This is 
the creative energy, and it always produces according to our word. 

How are you thinking? According to the Nature-spell, or 
according to your true being? Are you one of the commonly pas- 
sive mass, or are you individualizing your soul? Will you con- 
tinue to experience what belongs to this hereditary passivity, or 
will you realize your " heredity from God " by declaring it unto 
yourself as the beginning of that end? 

" As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

Is your thought the general and passive, or the individual 
and positive? 

To overcome does not mean to attack and demolish, but to 
come over, pass over what stands in the way. It means to go 
forward. " Speak unto the children of Israel that they go for- 
ward." Whatever the obstacle we can move forward, if we do 
not stop to do battle with the obstruction. We are always greater 
than it, and it has to give way if we move forward. We can move 
over it or under it, through or around it, some way, somehow. 



THE INGKAFTED WOKD AND WHAT COMES 

OF IT. 

" 0! yes! this teaching is very attractive. As a theory I 
like it very much, but I do not see any pronounced change in 
myself." 

This utterance — perhaps you have expressed the same view. 
or something like it — shows that the gulf between the ideal and 
the practical has not yet been bridged for the speaker. 

The theory may be ever so perfect, but if it is not also prac- 
tical, is not capable of practical demonstration, it is of but little 
value as compared to that which would meet this need. 

There are those who know that the teachings of the Science 
of Being are capable of practical demonstration. They have had 
the proof. What has been done may be done again. And the 
reason why you do not " see any pronounced change " in your- 
self is because you have not performed your part of the neces- 
sary work. 

You accept the statement " Thought is creative " as true, 
and then you wonder why you are not immediately transformed 
from a suffering human being into a white-winged angel. 

Why do you expect translation instead of growth? Per- 
haps because the strength of the old view " Jesus Christ has done 
it all for me and I have nothing to do " remains with you; but 
for whatever cause, your expectation will fail of fulfilment till 
you do your part. 

Turn to Nature for a lesson as to what your part is, and 
see how, when this is performed, the rest is sure. There is a 
process known as grafting, by which a shoot from one tree is in- 
serted in another tree which nourishes the shoot so that it will 
grow and bear fruit. The tree is the stock which supplies the 
vitality necessary to the graft; a supply which brings the graft 
to the fruit-bearing stage. But the fruit borne by the graft is al- 
ways after its kind and not according to the tree. 

This well known fact in Nature indicates a law back of it; 
and as what we call Natural law is but one plane of operation of 
Absolute Law, it points us to another plane which we will do 
well to discover and utilize. 

Eemembering that the Natural World is representative of 
the Spiritual Eeal; that the overruling Law of Cause and Effect 
works uninterruptedly from First Cause all the way down to 



THE INGRAFTED WORD AND WHAT COMES OF IT. 95 

what we call the physical world, this fact, that fruit will be ac- 
cording to graft, and that the stock nourishes the graft and 
brings it to the fruit-bearing stage, is of great practical value. 

Thought-Force is creative. It is the stock which nourishes 
and brings our individual thoughts to pass. Your thought which 
you are thinking this minute is a graft which you are placing in 
that stock. The consequences, the fruit it bears, will be according 
to it, therefore of your own making. 

For example, you graft a shoot from a blue plum-tree into a 
red plum-tree, and when that shoot has grown to the fruit-bear- 
ing stage it will bear blue, not red, plums. The fruit is accord- 
ing to the graft. 

Each thought you think is a shoot grafted into that stock — 
Thought-Force. This Force nourishes your thought and brings 
it to the fruit-bearing stage. Its fruit is your subsequent ex- 
perience. Your experience at any time is the legitimate fruit of 
your previous thinking, for it is the fruit according to the graft. 

Thought-Force is unqualified. It brings fruit, it is creative. 
But it does not determine the hind. It nourishes the graft placed 
in it, whatever this graft may be. It shows neither favor nor dis- 
favor. It is not a kind itself. It is absolute, therefore unquali- 
fied. It brings all kinds to pass, for it, to be true to itself, must 
nourish every and any graft placed in it. 

This is Law. And because of the nature of Thought-Force, 
because it is the Creative Power, we can determine beforehand 
what kind of fruit we will have. 

We can gather the fruit of the tree of life, if we will; or we 
can keep on gathering the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which, 
as we eat, brings us death. 

Here is the power of individuality. We can choose between 
the two. But we do not, we can not choose till we see that there 
are two possibilities for us; and here is where experience has 
served us. 

It has brought us to where we have sought and found that 
knowledge of truth which is wisdom, instead of mere knowledge 
of facts. We have suffered, and through our suffering we have 
been led to seek the reason why. Well for us if we have found 
that it was the fruit of the graft we ignorantly placed in the 
stock that brought the graft to fruitage. 

With this understanding we no longer attribute our suffer- 
ing to God's intention, we begin to render righteous judgment. 
We have gathered the fruit of ignorant grafting; and now, learn- 
ing through experience, we can graft wisely, knowing that "in 
the fulness of the time " we can gather the fruit of wisdom. 

Here is a simple rule to remember and apply. 

Creative-Force compels result from our thought, 
but we determine its kind. 

We can choose the graft which shall be placed in the stock; 



96 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

hence, we can choose what our experience shall be. We can 
work with law, knowing that the result is sure. 

" Eeceive with meekness the ingrafted word, which is able 
to save your souls." 

Eead this statement again and again. 

" Which is able." 

Do you see what the trouble is? Why you have not yet 
seen "any pronounced change" in yourself? Is it not because 
you have not received with meekness the ingrafted word? 

When you were told to think a certain way continually, to 
make daily affirmations for yourself, to think thoughts and speak 
words contrary to the outward seeming, you said " But I do not 
see how that can do anything. There is no getting around facts." 

And you did not do this, except in a half-hearted desultory 
manner now and then. You knew too much, that was the trouble. 
You knew so much that you did not know enough. You could 
not receive with meekness that which was able to change you 
" from glory to glory." 

It was too simple. Had it been some exceedingly complex 
and complicated process, requiring means to be gathered from 
all four quarters of the globe, acquired only by great outlay of 
time and money, you would have had great faith and would have 
moved heaven and earth to lay hold upon it. 

But " the ingrafted word " is too simple, and you have stood 
one side saying " How can that do anything? " instead of doing 
your own grafting and finding out. 

Note that James says that the ingrafted word is able to save 
the soul; able to save your self-consciousness from the limita- 
tions of mortal sense existence; able to eliminate the death ele- 
ment; able to remove evil and suffering. 

You want redemption, salvation from these conditions, of 
course. Do you want it enough to attend to your grafting? 
Enough to watch and see what kind of a graft you are momen- 
tarily inserting in the stock? 

Can you drop your intellectual theories for a time while you 
attend strictly to this work of conscious grafting? Can you be 
meekly faithful and obedient to this law of cause and effect? 

Will you pay the price of the thing you desire? Will you be 
fair, and not say "This is impossible" till you have grafted 
consciously and wisely as many years as you have been grafting 
unconsciously and ignorantly? 

Stop declaring that you can not accomplish this or help the 
other. You are grafting negatives into that stock which will 
bring them to fruit-bearing, and you will experience lack of abil- 
ity and helplessness. Whatever is in accord with the true being 
can come to pass; but the graft of your own thought must first be 
inserted in the nourishing stock. 

You alone can do this. You think your own thought, you 



THE INGRAFTED WORD AND WHAT COMES OF IT. 97 

must do the grafting. When your thought is like your true being, 
when it is an affirmation of what you are and what belongs to you 
as the child of God, the fruit, or result to you, will be according 
to the graft. 

" Be it unto thee according to thy word." 

Here do we find " the perfect law of liberty," and James 
also says " Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and con- 
tinueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the 
work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." 

Who gets the blessing? 

The doer of the work, not the forgetful hearer. 

Now ask yourself this question when you are disposed to 
grumble or feel doubtful of the truth because you do not yet 
see its manifestation — "Have I been doing the work? Have I 
inserted the right graft? " 

You will catch yourself with the old graft whose fruit is 
sickness, sorrow, and death ready in your hand again and again. 
But take courage, it is something, a great something, to have 
found " the perfect law of liberty; " and it is better to try again 
and again than to be content with the old graft and its fruit of 
bondage to mortal sense. 

The fruit does not appear immediately when the graft is 
placed in the tree, but it comes. So have that faith, through 
knowledge of the law, which is " the evidence of things not seen, 
the substance of things hoped for." 

This faith is based on understanding that the fruit is ac- 
cording to the graft, and is accompanied by the patience that can 
wait for the fullness of the time. 

Attach your conscious true thought to the Creative Power. 
Then you are a " doer of the work " which shall make the Truth 
itself, manifest. 

" Show me thy faith by thy works." 

To be a hearer of the word is good, but to be a doer of the 
work is so much better. You can forget what you hear, but what 
you do, is done; and your true being will not be manifest till 
you permit manifestation by doing your part. 

Stop finding fault and open the way for your likeness to 
God to appear. Divinity in humanity is the eternal order. 

Think your God-likeness instead of your sense-weakness. 
Graft that self-ideal into the eternal stock — Thought-Force. It 
will be nourished and sustained till it bears fruit according to the 
graft. 

Then, and before the fruit is full grown, you will "see a 
pronounced change" in yourself; a change "from glory to 
glory" till the divine imprint shines forth, transforming the 
flesh. 



THE LAW OF LIBEKTY. 

What is the " perfect law of liberty " ? Is liberty — freedom 
from all that practically holds us in bonds, possible? 

Yes, not only possible but sure, and yet attended with con- 
ditions. 

You say you do not see how our sufferings, all that we call 
evil, are self-made; but just as long as you continue to believe 
that they are not, that they come from some intent and power 
extraneous to the human race, you will not be likely to keep the 
conditions necessary for this possible liberty. 

Here is one essential which you must try to grasp and hold 
on to; you, I mean, who must have a reason at every step of the 
way and can not with your inner eye pierce the clouds that envelop 
your rational nature. 

Nature has no ethics. 

Eead that over and over to impress its meaning and truth 
upon you. There is no right and wrong in Nature per se. Nat- 
ure is that eternal order of fundamental factors compelled by 
what First Cause is, not by what it chooses. And where there is 
no power of choice there is no right or wrong. 

Eead that last sentence again and again. 

Only where there is power of choice can there be any right 
or wrong. We have been accustomed for so long to think of God 
as acting according to His will, and thinking of His will as what 
He chooses to do, that it is not easy to grasp this higher meaning. 
But try to see it, for it will help you so much when you do. It 
solves many a puzzle. 

There is no justification for a God who purposely inflicts 
evil and suffering upon human beings, knowing their limitations 
and inability to cope with them. Such a God is an unnameable 
horror. When we see God as the governing Principle in Nature 
that will always act according to its own nature, we find a God 
that can be depended upon; and we see that understanding is 
the most essential thing. 

God is Mind. Mind is always active. Its activity is Thought. 
Thought-Force is the Creative Power. It is constantly creating 
results. 

You and I experience these results because this Creative 
Power works through us — through our thinking. It is sure to 
create. It can not help it. It creates for us — to us. 



THE LAW OF LIBERTY. 99 

What does it create? Our experiences. 

Why do we have a painful experience? Because our own 
thought puts the quality into the result. 

" But I had a very dreadful experience of which I had not 
been thinking at all " you say. 

Yes, consciously you mean. You had not consciously, in- 
tentionally been thinking of such an one; but you had been un- 
consciously, unintentionally permitting thoughts in the common 
mental atmosphere to pass through you as your thoughts because 
you had not awakened to the necessity of conscious, individual 
thinking; and here you are guilty, not in a moral sense, but ac- 
cording to the sequence of cause and effect. 

Morally there is no guilt till there is knowledge, for there is 
no active power of choice. You, the living soul, are the chooser, 
and the only one. And though ideally you have power to choose 
how you will think, practically, as a new-born Adam, you have 
not this power till experience has developed it in you. When 
experience has brought you to this point, ethics begin, and not 
before. Till then there is no right or wrong in the ethical sense. 

There has been departure from the order of Nature, but this 
was consequent upon ignorance, not upon choice. You did not 
know any better, but your ignorance can not save — has not saved 
you from consequences; for Thought-Force is, ever was, and al- 
ways will be, creative. It is Nature, not ethics. 

As a living soul, from the first moment of existence you are 
confronted with that eternal order which constitutes Nature. 
You are to read the riddle, for you are the only factor in Nature 
capable of understanding the rest. 

Eemember this. Read it again and again. 

This is your destiny, to compass the whole. You, and you 
only, have power of choice. But this power is latent in you as 
an infant soul, and you become aware of it after having had 
experience. 

You are first the servant of Nature, but you can become the 
Master of Nature. Through your ignorance of what and whence 
you are, though you have a divine birthright which entitles you 
to be Lord of all, you are first servant of all. You think by in- 
fluence, not by choice. 

Read that again. 

Through ignorance — which is natural — you are negative, 
not positive. By being negative you are passive. By being pas- 
sive — naturally — you reflect universal possibilities as your con- 
ditions. Practically, notwithstanding what you are ideally, you 
are a pipe through which passes the mental sewage of the hu- 
man race; and this stream leaves its deposits with you. 

You think as all ignorant souls think, influenced by what 
passes through you. And it is this kind' of thinking which is 
responsible for your discordant and undesirable conditions. 



100 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

This is not wrong in the ethical sense, for at first you know 
no better. It becomes wrong when you do know better, for ethics 
begin only with self-knowledge. Though not wrong the conse- 
quence is undesirable; but how would you find this out if you did 
not experience it? Experience is your first teacher, and when 
you understand her your future is in your own hands. 

By your experience you learn that your undesirable condi- 
tions are consequent upon your ignorant or unconscious thinking, 
not upon conscious or intentional intellection; and that by in- 
tentional intellection you can change them. You can ward off 
and divert the general current that has been pouring through 
you, by filling yourself from the fountain head. 

Eead that again. 

Full you are bound to be, and if you do not fill yourself with 
what you want, you will be filled by what you will not like as you 
experience it. " Nature abhors a vacuum." 

When you have experienced what you do not like, you be- 
come competent to choose between it and what you would like. 
Then, having gained some self-knowledge, seeing that Thought 
is creative, you choose what you will think, becoming positive 
instead of passive. " First the natural, afterward the spiritual." 

You choose what you will experience by putting yourself in 
the position of an individual doer, instead of remaining in that 
natural passivity which makes you only a receiver and transmitter 
of common ignorance and its errors of thought. 

You are the only factor in Nature capable of understanding 
the rest. Excuse repetition. Consequently you are the only one 
that can exercise the power of choice. This power is latent in 
you naturally, but it becomes active through experience. By its 
exercise you individualize your soul, preventing it from being 
only the conductor for the common mentality of the unenlight- 
ened race. 

You " come out " from the universal to become the individ- 
ual, and use Nature's resources instead of being used by them. 

Now do you begin to see what is this " perfect law of lib- 
erty " and are you ready to look into it? So long as you remain 
this channel for the common stream to pour through, so long 
you will bear the consequences. You can free yourself from them 
by ceasing to be this channel. " Choose ye this day whom ye 
will serve." 

Because thought is creative, because your thought gives 
quality to result, you can have the result you choose to have; but 
remember that choice is action and not passivity. Eead " The 
Mastery of Fate " in the last number again, and see how neces- 
sary it is to be a " doer of the work " instead of " a forgetful 
hearer." Do an intentional, wise or enlightened thinking and 
you will prove the perfect law of liberty. 

Thinking from influence instead of from choice is the nat- 



THE LAW OF LIBERTY. 101 

ural state pertaining to every living soul. Coming out of the 
natural into the positive spiritual is the possibility for every one, 
and is the way of salvation from all that afflicts. 

We are never punished for our sins by a despotic ruler, for 
there is none. We are sure to be punished by them, by our sins 
of omission as well as of commission; and this punishment will 
continue till we oppose the enlightened individual thought- 
pattern to the universal ignorant thought-pattern; till we stand 
in the world as individuals instead of passive instruments for 
the increase of sense-impressions. 

The remedy for all that afflicts is to get back into the order 
of Nature from which in our self -idea we have ignorantly de- 
parted. This departure is the first natural — it is not an ethical 
matter — but the reinstatement is the higher natural. 

Our choice lies between the two positions. When we do as 
well as we know, we do right. When we do not do as well as we 
know, we do wrong; and right and wrong are our own judgment. 
Nature's verdict is wise and unwise. 

For generations we have been taught that Adam's sin " of 
which we are all partakers " was a moral sin. This is the mistake, 
the " original sin " of theology. There was and is no moral law 
in the garden of Eden till souls make one. Nature is above 
ethics. Adam's sin is the natural consequence of ignorance, and 
the Adam-soul is naturally ignorant of its divine origin and 
destiny. 

As Adams we share this natural error in self-idea and ex- 
perience its consequences. But all the while there is the perfect 
law of liberty waiting for the soul to find it and keep its condi- 
tions. The soul must choose the positive and abjure the passive, 
thinking by choice instead of by influence. Then it is " a doer 
of the work" necessary to its own redemption from suffering, 
from all disease. 

Because the law of cause and effect governs all things, be- 
cause it can always be depended upon, this redemption is sure. 
By choice your relation to Nature and her resources can be 
changed " in the twinkling of an eye." Naturally the servant, 
you step into the position of Master. 

Experience then becomes only the means by which you 
prove your mastery, good and valuable all the while, however the 
sense-man may feel it. Sensation no longer rules. It is ruled. 
He may cry out again and again, this sense-man, but the word of 
the Master is the word of authority and it will still the tempest 
of sensation. 

By taking this position you lift up this sense-man, trans- 
forming him into a higher man, a transformation that shall go 
on till the Divine Likeness shines forth in all its majesty; and on 
this Mount of Transfiguration you too shall hear the silent voice 
saying " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." 



CONSTKUCTIVE IMAGINATION. 

" Professor Tyndall's thoughts were not limited to physics 
and allied sciences, but passed into psychology." 

" Led as he was to make excursions into the science of mind, 
he was led into that indeterminate region through which this, 
science passes into the science of being." 

" Rightly conceived imagination is the power of mental rep- 
resentation, and is measured by the vividness and truth of this 
representation." 

" This constructive imagination is the highest of human 
faculties." — Eeminiscences of Professor Tyndall, by Herbert 
Spencer. 

Have you looked upon your imagination, your power of 
mental representation, lightly, esteeming it of little real value? 
Or have you perhaps feared it as something that would lead you 
into all sorts of vagaries and mishaps ? 

Either view is a limited one and had best be exchanged for 
another yielded by some understanding of what you are and to 
what you are destined. The Science of Being shows you that 
your power of mental representation is a God-derived power, 
and that happiness or misery depend upon your use of it. 
Imagination can be, is both destructive and constructive ; de- 
structive when the power of mental representation is ignorantly 
used ; constructive when it is wisely used. 

You want happiness instead of misery, strength instead of 
weakness, power in place of subjection. The way to get what 
you want is wise, enlightened use of your power of mental rep- 
resentation. 

You are, but except what you are be mentally represented to 
yourself, you will not gain what you seek. 

There is no other way of obtaining health, power, and peace 
as permanent possessions ; and this is why the whole human race 
is groaning and will continue to groan under a burden of suffer- 
ing, for as long as the imagination is used according to sense- 
consciousness, woes and miseries will be created. "As a man 
thinketh " — as we use our power of mental representation, so 
will our condition be. 

What are you in your real being ? Have you given sufficient 
attention to these principles to enable you to grasp your true, 
eternal nature ? To see, by means of logic, that you are the per- 
fect expression of the Absolute ? That you are complete and 
whole as the Idea of the Infinite mind ? That all is in you and 



CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION. 103 

nothing is outside you ? That all lack, all limitation and imper- 
fection is in self -recognition and not in what you are ? 

If you can get away from sense-consciousness long enough 
to follow a deductive train of thought, and see what you are ac- 
cording to the sequence of Cause and Effect, in contrast to what 
you seem to be on the objective plane of existence, you have 
taken the first step in the right direction. Your next step is 
mental representation — right use of your imagination. Here is 
the secret of all success, of all advance in realization. 

As a living soul you have first to find and then appropriate 
your real being. You must grow to feel it, as well as discern it 
through the sequence of cause and effect. You will feel it only 
as you appropriate it, and you will appropriate only as you men- 
tally represent it to yourself. This is constructive imagination — 
using your power of mental representation according to funda- 
mental and changeless truth. 

In other words, think of yourself as you are in your real 
being, instead of as you seem on the objective plane. To think 
of yourself as you seem on that plane is to re-present the seem- 
ing. To think of yourself as you are ideally, is to re-present that 
ideal. You will know your true being only as you re-present it. 
You will continue to know the seeming if you continue to re- 
present it. To re-present the seeming is destructive imagination. 
To re-present the ideal is constructive imagination. 

Though your real being — the God-Idea — is in itself, it is not 
for you till you re-present it. Though subsistent it will become 
existent only through your re-presentation. 

What are you presenting for your own recognition ? You have 
a sense of pain, and at once you re-present that pain by thinking 
" Oh ! dear me ! how my head aches ! What shall I do ? It 
aches so hard I can not hold it up ! " 

First a sense, then a thought — mental representation — 
then an established tendency in consciousness. This order keeps 
sense-consciousness the be-all and end-all of existence. To break 
this condition mental representation must oppose the sense in- 
stead of conform to it. There must be re-presentation, not of 
the sense, but of the truth. This is your power and opportunity. 
To re-present the sense is to increase its strength and compel its 
re-appearance. To re-present the true being, opposing it to the 
sense, is to increase your recognition of that being and decrease 
your recognition of the sense. 

You compel the appearance of your highest, which waits this 
compelling at your hands. It is, but it can not appear till you 
do your part. 

Think a moment, and you will see that existence, daily living, 
is made up of what we mentally present to ourselves. The thought- 
world is the world we live in while we look upon an exterior world. 
The sum of our thoughts is the sum of our joys or miseries. The 
quality of our thoughts is the quality of our sensations. We 



104 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

allow a sense»impression to give quality to — to govern the 
thought, instead of making our thought change the quality of our 
impression. 

We re-present, or present anew, our sensation as our thought. 
Our self-idea or self -representation is according to our sense-im- 
pression and contrary to truth. | Practically, we are our self -idea, 
whatever we are ideally. Hence, as souls we will never know, 
feel, and be our best and highest till our self -idea is like our 
God-being ; till we have re-presented that being to our con- 
sciousness. 

In being, you are the expression of the Absolute, or God. 
In self-consciousness you are what you think you are, for you are 
your own self-idea. You are what you present for your own 
recognition. You have power to present for it the eternal real; 
to re-present the God-idea. You are a free agent. You are able 
to think as you choose and to choose what you will think. You 
are free to ascend or to remain on the natural plane of sense-im- 
pression. You are free to form your self-idea according to sense, 
or according to logical sequence and necessity. You are free to 
think from influence or from choice ; to re-present the thoughts 
of an ignorant humanity, or those of an enlightened individual- 
izing soul. 

Your presentation to your own recognition is always a re- 
presentation. You tread the round of sense, thought, and feel- 
ing till, through experience, you become able to follow the round 
of clear vision, thought, and feeling. The one leads down to 
death, the other up to life eternal. You can re-present sensa- 
tions continually — you call them physical — or you can re-present 
what spiritual insight reveals. 

For you, as a soul, imagination creates. It did not create 
you, but it creates for you, as, or according to the way, it is used. 
Never think of the imagination lightly, for it is a mighty power. 
It makes you the magician. You can summon what you will by 
means of it. Whatever you command to appear before you will 
appear, for it is the power of re-presentation. If it is destruc- 
tive you are the black, if constructive, the white magician. 

To be truly constructive it must re-present the true and eter- 
nal, or form, as your self-idea, the likeness of the God-Idea. 
Then you will build " according to the pattern shown you in the 
mount," making your bodies " the temple of the living God." 
When imagination forms as your self -idea that which is unlike 
the true being, re-presenting the sense-beliefs of the human race, 
you are building that which shall be overthrown till not one 
stone rests upon another. 

You are the son of the carpenter. You are a builder, and 
build you must. You are building all the time, whether you are ! 
conscious of it or not. You are presenting patterns to yourself 
continually, according to which the building goes on. You are 
building up a self-consciousness according to pattern. You are 



CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION. 105 

making your self. See to it that your self is like the self which 
is like unto God. Present this Likeness to your own recognition, 
thus re -presenting it according to Original Design. 

Be thankful for your power of mental representation, and 
use it reverently and wisely, lest it use you through your igno- 
rance of its nature. "Vain imaginings" are those mental repre- 
sentations, those thought-pictures, which can not draw the soul 
forward in an ascent ; which tend to keep it down to the plane of 
sense-impression. 

This bundle of sensations which is called man, and whose 
end is death, is the product of destructive imagination. The 
incarnated Christ is the product of constructive imagination. 
Jesus of Nazareth is our example. He builded according to the 
Divine Likeness. He did not say " I and my physical body are 
one," but "I and my Father are one." He re-presented his own 
God-being by making his self-idea in accord with it, thus pre- 
senting that being for incarnation. 

If you do not understand this last statement, read it slowly 
three times before you go on. 

Our real being is incarnated only as it is re-presented to the 
Soul as its self -idea. 

Read that sentence very slowly weighing each word. 

The explanation of "Reincarnation," the key that unlocks its 
measure of truth and locks up its greater measure of error, is 
found in it. You are a student you know, not merely a super- 
ficial reader; were you not you would not seek to trace and 
prove the principles of the Science of Being. The student does 
not merely seek to know. He desires to know that he knows ; 
therefore he thinks as he reads. 

Go back to the beginning and read this article over again if 
you are puzzled. 

Ideally, or according to the law of Cause and Effect, we are 
God-like and perfect in being. Practically, or according to self- 
consciousness, we are very far from God-like and perfect ; and 
this is because, practically, or as a matter of feeling, we are our 
self-idea. 

The great power, which, if you will, you can wield to-day, 
is that of constructive imagination. You can build in thought, 
and if you build according to the true, therefore the eternal 
pattern, your work will endure. There will be no aches, pains, 
and miseries in your building for they are not in the pattern. 
They are on the plane of sense-consciousness and your pattern 
is not there. You are not there, for you are not held there by 
your pattern. A temporary sense can not chain you to its level. 
You know that you are ascending, for heaven is coming nearer. 

How are you thinking ? What is your pattern ? 



INCAENATION^THE PUEPOSE OF NATUEE 
FULFILLED. 

You have read this statement again and again, have yon, 
and still can not qnite see what it means? 

" Our real being is incarnated only as it is re-presented to. 
the Soul as its self-idea." 

Perhaps the meaning can be made plainer. It is a great 
truth which it is well to know. Surely you understand by this 
time — you can not have read The Exodus for two years without 
gaining this understanding — that as an individual you have both 
individuality and personality. Your individuality is. what is 
eternally fixed; your personality is the unfixed, in that it can 
be better and better. Your individuality is your real being. 
That always was as the effect of First Cause. It never began, 
and it will never end, nor does it change, in time. 

Your personality is composed of soul, shape, and body. Soul 
is self -consciousness; shape is that outline called Person; and 
body is embodiment. Time begins with the minimum and ends 
with the maximum of self-consciousness. 

Shape and body belong to time. Your existence — not your 
being — began with your first self-recognition, and it will end 
only with the fulness of self-recognition — only when you have 
eventuated all the possibilities of your being. As an individual 
you are now living in time, because you are passing from the 
minimum to the maximum of self-consciousness. It is possible 
for you to tarry with the minimum or quicken your pace toward 
the maximum. 

As an existent soul you are the product of Nature. Study 
" The Evolution of Evolution " and you will see why. But, also 
as an existent soul, you will become more than the product of 
Nature. But this " more " depends upon yourself. Your shape 
or limited outline remains the same, but your body changes in 
this advance from the minimum to the maximum of self-con- 
sciousness, because your body is always the embodiment of your 
self-idea. 

Embodiment or incarnation is the purpose toward which 
Nature works till the purpose is fulfilled. What is embodied or 
incarnated is your self-idea, and what is dependent upon it. 
The quality of incarnation or embodiment, therefore, depends 
upon the quality of your self -idea. 



INCARNATION. 107 

As a living soul, rooted in the real being but looking upon 
the visible shape, your first self -idea is the natural one. " This 
is I," is your first self -idea, and existence, for you, is dominated 
by it. This self -idea localizes all your sensation in the shape or 
Person, for this idea is builded into it as body. This is the natural 
self-idea, because it is according to sense-impression. 

But back of you, the living soul, is a great force pushing and 
pushing to urge you on and up away from the plane of sense- 
impression. Your self -idea holds you there, this force pushes you 
on, and between the two you suffer. Because of your natural 
self -idea you can not let go. If you could, the pushing would 
cause no pain. You would move with it instead of holding on. 

Because of your self-idea you are your body. Not till you 
begin to see that you are not your body, will you begin to let go 
and move in the direction in which you are being pushed. As 
you, the Soul, move in the upward direction — from the minimum 
toward the maximum of self -consciousness, your body moves up 
also; but you do not let go and move up till you begin to see the 
falsity of your natural self -idea and put a better one in its place. 

Nature furnishes you with the basic body in which is em- 
bodied, or incarnated, your self -idea, and those thoughts for which 
it is the key-note. " The Evolution of Evolution " shows you 
what this basic body is and why. Your body is builded into this 
basic body. Your body is the thought-body, the embodiment of 
the thoughts for which your self -idea is the key-note. Your body 
is incarnated in the Nature or basic body. This basic body, 
through your thinking, becomes infused with quality; or, the 
basic body is qualified by the thought-body. 

It follows, therefore, that the highest incarnation or embodi- 
ment can come only when the highest self-idea is the key-note 
for the thoughts of the soul. This necessitates the presentation 
of the real being to the soul as re-presentation, or in self-idea. 
Without re-presentation there can be no incarnation. 

Not till the natural self -idea is opposed by the true self -idea 
will you let go of the plane of sense-impression and ascend where 
you belong— to the plane of Likeness to God. Eemember what 
has been said about constructive imagination. When a man 
builds a house, the house is a brick, a stone, or a wooden one, 
according to the material used. The body constructed in the 
basic or Nature-body is according to material used. As thoughts 
are the building material, the quality of the thoughts determines 
the quality of the embodiment. 

The self -idea is the key-note according to which the thoughts 
respond in vibration or in quality. It is the skeleton, as it were, 
rounded out and filled in by the thoughts which accord with it. 
This skeleton, thus rounded out and filled in, is the structure in 
the basic or Nature-body. It is the soul's embodiment. 

Let us follow this order once more to make sure that you 



108 HOW WE MASTER OUR FATE. 

understand it. You are a living soul, using what you call your 
body. You have said that this body, whose members you can see 
and enumerate, was yourself. You do not say this now. You 
know better. You see it as possession rather than as possessor. 

You see that you, the looker-on, are more than any or all 
members of the visible body; and you know that change is con- 
stantly going on in this body. 

You have learned to think according to your real being, 
instead of according to your sense of body, and you are find- 
ing that this way of thinking is bringing changes in your idea 
of yourself, in your feelings, and in your body. You say some- 
times "I am not what I was five years ago." You are con- 
scious of a change. Your friends say " You are different from 
what you used to be." They are conscious of a change in you, 
and yet as they look at your physical body, as you look at it, 
it appears to be the same flesh, blood, bone, and muscle. It is 
what it was, and yet there is difference somewhere. 

You, the living soul, are more than you were. You are more 
conscious of your true being and its possibilities, and this " more " 
is embodied in your physical body as a finer body which is not 
visible to the outer sense of sight. It is what has been built into 
the nature-body. It pervades the physical body, and as the 
thought-body, the building for which your thoughts have been 
the material, it has a more permanent quality than the flesh and 
blood seen with the outer sense. 

Thought-building is character-building; character-building 
is body-building; and it is the difference in your thought-body, 
its higher quality, that makes you look different to your friends 
even though they still see flesh and blood. As you, the living 
soul, appropriate your being, appropriate what it affords, you 
incarnate or embody what it includes and necessitates. But you 
do not appropriate as you might till your self -idea — your idea 
about what you are — is like what you are in being. Till your self- 
idea is the true one, you can not embody truth. Till you embody 
truth, it is not incarnated. 

Upon you, tine living soul, depends TrutVs incarnation — the 
Word made Flesh. 

You, the living soul, stand between the Absolute and the 
Incarnate God. This incarnation can not take place without your 
help. Re-presentation is necessary. God and Man are; but they 
must be presented to you before they can be incarnated. They 
are presented to you in your self -idea when it is like what they 
are; and by means of this re-presentation they are incarnated, 
because your thoughts are the building material and your self- 
idea determines the quality of your thoughts. When you build 
your real being into Flesh; when you embody its nature, you 
will also embody its Likeness to God. When this Likeness is 
builded into body, God will appear in the body. 



INCARNATION. 109 

Can you see now what Job meant when he said "And 
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh 
shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
behold"? 

That coat of skin which you have called your body is but 
the sense-garment that clothes your body; for your body is the 
thought-body. The character which you, the living soul, have 
builded, endures when the sense-garment has disintegrated. It 
is your flesh. The sense -garment — physical flesh and blood — is 
what your friends call your flesh, or body; and to them your 
body is gone when that disintegrates. But you have your body, 
though they may not see it. 

You will see God in the Flesh only as you see God's Likeness 
in it. And you will see this Likeness in it only as you build it 
into it. 

Do you realize, even a little, your glorious privilege, which 
is yours as a living soul? You are the means by which the Divine 
is incarnated. The Christ, the Likeness of God, is formed in you 
when you conceive the Christ—when your self -idea is true to your 
real being; when your self -pattern is like unto the eternal pat- 
tern. The Christ is formed in you as the Divine Incarnation 
when you build the Divine Character; and you have your im- 
mortal or glorified body when you build it by building this char- 
acter. 

How shall you successfully perform this building? Paul 
tells us how. By " Casting down imaginations and every high 
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and 
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." 

Thinking that which is not true according to the eternal 
standard, making the true to sense the absolute truth, is the 
imagination that is to be cast down; for it is use of Thought- 
Force according to a wrong pattern. 

Constructive imagination is use according to the true pat- 
tern. The truth, held as self-idea, and concentration upon the 
truth, is " bringing every thought to the obedience of Christ "; 
and this is the way the building is accomplished. 

The temple of the living God is the work of the Master- 
mason. It is raised stone by stone as the building proceeds ac- 
cording to the eternal plan. Sufficient for the now is sketched 
daily upon the trestle-board by the keeper of the lost word. He 
reads what has been and what shall be, but he utters not his 
secret. The building is the utterance, the revelation of the 
Eternal Purpose and the manner of its fulfilment. 

Have you " the Word "? Then as a wise master-builder you 
are building on the eternal foundation; " For other foundation 
can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 



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